Electric Vehicles: The politics of electric transportation

[DT]

What this thread about?

The tech is here, manufacturers are embracing it, but what about the government? What is being done politically to aid or stifle the adoption of electric transportation? This is the place to discuss.

 

[SuperMatt]

Yesterday during the State of the Union speech, President Biden mentioned something about EV charging stations. I looked it up to see what it was about.

He claimed he wants to make 500,000 new charging stations.

In the infrastructure plan, $5 billion in funds will only be released to states if they release EV charging infrastructure plans. Then another $2.5 billion in competitive grants to be announced later this year.

Biden touts charging network expansion in State of the Union amid 85% jump in 2021 US EV sales

During his speech to Congress, President Joe Biden highlighted plans for a 500,000-charger national network supported by the federal government as EV sales surge and the market prepares for a flood of federal funding.

www.utilitydive.com

In his State of the Union address, Biden called for lowering the price of EVs and thus "saving you another $80 a month that you’ll never have to pay at the pump." He also touted companies choosing to build new factories in the United States and pointed to investments of $11 billion by Ford Motor and $7 billion by General Motors to build EVs.

Convincing consumers to make the switch means building sufficient charging infrastructure -- and at least initially, building charging infrastructure faster than it is utilized, Eichberger said. Fuels Institute, a research group, expects the U.S. will need a mix of 1.8 million public Direct Current fast chargers and Level 2 chargers by 2030.

"Not only do we need to build the infrastructure, we need to tell people the infrastructure exists. They need to see it, they need to experience it," he said. "They need to be reassured ... And that's going to require probably an overbuild of the market, relative to what's actually necessary, to provide that customer assurance that they they're never going to stranded."

 

[Eric]

Tesla for now but will likely impact all EVs eventually, the war against the electric car is far from over.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1499202186269577219/

 

[SuperMatt]

Tesla for now but will likely impact all EVs eventually, the war against the electric car is far from over.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1499202186269577219/

Here‘s some more info on the bill. The authors claim it’s not about shutting down service centers. It’s about requiring licenses and consumer protections.

Trouble for Tesla? Bill targets electric vehicles in Oklahoma

A hot topic House bill regarding electric vehicles in Oklahoma unanimously passed committee on Wednesday.

kfor.com

It seems like it’s more a dealership protection thing than an EV thing. Tesla famously doesn’t use car dealers in the traditional American model.

I think the bill will be interesting to watch because other manufacturers are not too enamored with the current dealership model either. And let’s face it: customers hate the dealerships too. At this point, lobbying politicians is all they have.

 

[Eric]

Here‘s some more info on the bill. The authors claim it’s not about shutting down service centers. It’s about requiring licenses and consumer protections.

Trouble for Tesla? Bill targets electric vehicles in Oklahoma

A hot topic House bill regarding electric vehicles in Oklahoma unanimously passed committee on Wednesday.

kfor.com

It seems like it’s more a dealership protection thing than an EV thing. Tesla famously doesn’t use car dealers in the traditional American model.

I think the bill will be interesting to watch because other manufacturers are not too enamored with the current dealership model either. And let’s face it: customers hate the dealerships too. At this point, lobbying politicians is all they have.

We went to the dealership to buy out my wife's BMW 1 series upon the expiring lease the other day and it was absolutely painful, 4.5 hours to buy a car at a predetermined set price, ridiculous on every level to have to wait that long and deal with all the dealership bullshit. Seriously, it was all I could do not to walk out in the middle of the process. I'll never be going back to that again.

People can bash Tesla all they want but they've streamlined and modernized the entire process, it took me all of 20 minutes to fill out the application and I had a response within an hour and then drove to the lot to grab the car without ever seeing a single salesman or loan manager. It was the best buying experience I've ever had.

 

[SuperMatt]

We went to the dealership to buy out my wife's BMW 1 series upon the expiring lease the other day and it was absolutely painful, 4.5 hours to buy a car at a predetermined set price, ridiculous on every level to have to wait that long and deal with all the dealership bullshit. Seriously, it was all I could do not to walk out in the middle of the process. I'll never be going back to that again.

People can bash Tesla all they want but they've streamlined and modernized the entire process, it took me all of 20 minutes to fill out the application and I had a response within an hour and then drove to the lot to grab the car without ever seeing a single salesman or loan manager. It was the best buying experience I've ever had.

Yep, it seems like right now it is the dealerships + their lobbyists vs. everybody else. Nobody likes them, so they lobby state legislatures to either protect themselves or ban other sales models.

Funny how the politicians MOST likely to side with the dealerships are the ones who claim to be all about limiting government regulation, promoting the free market, etc.

 

[User.45]

Belongs here

 

[User.45]

We went to the dealership to buy out my wife's BMW 1 series upon the expiring lease the other day and it was absolutely painful, 4.5 hours to buy a car at a predetermined set price, ridiculous on every level to have to wait that long and deal with all the dealership bullshit. Seriously, it was all I could do not to walk out in the middle of the process. I'll never be going back to that again.

People can bash Tesla all they want but they've streamlined and modernized the entire process, it took me all of 20 minutes to fill out the application and I had a response within an hour and then drove to the lot to grab the car without ever seeing a single salesman or loan manager. It was the best buying experience I've ever had.

BMW dealerships are particularly awful...

 

[Herdfan]

Belongs here

It's a Ram. What do you expect?

 

[Eric]

With gas on the rise they're flying off the shelves right now, my wife likes to watch the Tesla site to see how many come and go from the local dealerships and it used to be several would show up every day, not it's none with the exception of some Model S which are basically 6 figure cars. I can only imagine EVs from everywhere are hot items right now.

 

[DT]

I can only imagine EVs from everywhere are hot items right now.

I've been seeing people talk about $10K-15K markups on the new Kia EV6

 

[lizkat]

I've been seeing people talk about $10K-15K markups on the new Kia EV6

Holy jumping jacks. I only paid 15k for my house (40 years ago and pre fixing it up, of course). Still... no wonder I already had sticker shock from car prices of recent years, never mind these wild markups now popping up in the EV sector.

 

[SuperMatt]

Holy jumping jacks. I only paid 15k for my house (40 years ago and pre fixing it up, of course). Still... no wonder I already had sticker shock from car prices of recent years, never mind these wild markups now popping up in the EV sector.

It’s not just the EV sector. With the chip shortages, all cars are going well above sticker price. Used car prices are ridiculous too.