2020 Chevy Dolt Bolt.

Well, Mr Biden was elected, and he wants to try to put his promise into action, but even the liberal New York Times notes the problems:

Biden’s Push for Electric Cars: $174 Billion, 10 Years and a Bit of Luck

The president is hoping to make electric vehicles more affordable to turn a niche product into one with mass appeal.

By Niraj Chokshi | March 31, 2021

President Biden is a muscle-car guy — one of his most prized possessions is a 1967 Corvette that he got from his father. But he’s trying to make this an electric vehicle world.

So, his fossil-fueled Corvette is OK for he, but not for thee! Got it!

The $2 trillion infrastructure plan that he unveiled on Wednesday is aimed at tackling climate change in part by spending up to $174 billion to encourage Americans to switch to cars and trucks that run on electricity, not gasoline or diesel. That is a large investment but it might not be enough to push most Americans toward E.V.s.

Despite rapid growth in recent years, electric vehicles remain a niche product, making up just 2 percent of the new car market and 1 percent of all cars, sport-utility vehicles, vans and pickup trucks on the road. They have been slow to take off in large part because they can cost up to $10,000 more than similar conventional cars and trucks. Charging E.V.s is also more difficult and slower than simply refilling the tank at far more prevalent gas stations.

This is what prompted me to write on this article. Not only does the Times note that plug-in electrics are ‘niche products,’ but this is the first one I’ve seen from the liberal side of the credentialed media which has noted the problems with recharging the vehicles. The article noted that charging them was “slower” than filling your fuel tank with gasoline, though it was a journalistic failure to note how much slower. As we noted here, they can take the better part of an hour to charge at a high-capacity public station:

Charging an electric car at a charging station can take as little as 30 minutes or up to a day depending on a number of factors. The car’s battery size, your battery’s current state of charge, the max charging rate of your vehicle and the charger you’re using, and even the weather — all play a role in how quickly you’ll be able to fill up. A typical electric car like a Nissan Leaf (62-kWh battery) would take about 11.5 hours to charge from empty to full at home on a 240-volt Level 2 charger or could get to about an 80% charge in just 45 minutes if using a public Level 3 DC fast charger.

Then there was this:

Tesla Owners Wait in Long Lines to Recharge over Holidays

Institute for Energy Research | January 6, 2020

With over 400,000 Tesla vehicles on U.S. roads, Tesla’s Supercharger stations were overcrowded over the holidays and many Tesla owners faced an hours-long wait to recharge their electric vehicles. At one location in Kettleman City, California, a line of 50 or so Tesla vehicles awaiting a Supercharger stall stretched to about a quarter mile over Thanksgiving weekend. The station is located about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Its 40 stalls were insufficient to accommodate the demand, and the simultaneous recharging of the vehicles lowered the rate of recharging, frustrating customers even more. It takes about 52 minutes to charge a Model 3 to 80 percent at a 120 kilowatt Tesla Supercharger.

How many times have you gone to the gas station, and had to wait behind a vehicle or two to get your turn to fuel up. When it takes around five to ten minutes to pump gasoline into a vehicle, it’s annoying enough, but what if there was just one vehicle ahead of you . . . and it took the driver 52 minutes to recharge his car?

Mr. Biden hopes to address many of those challenges through federal largess. He aims to lower the cost of electric vehicles by offering individuals, businesses and governments tax credits, rebates and other incentives. To address the chicken-and-egg problem of getting people to try a new technology before it is widely accepted, he hopes to build half a million chargers by 2030 so people will feel confident that they won’t be stranded when they run out of juice. And he is offering help to automakers to get them to build electric vehicles and batteries in the United States.

It will take “federal largess,” because, as The Wall Street Journal noted, consumers aren’t buying them because most consumers don’t want them. The plug in electrics are simply not as convenient as gasoline powered automobiles.

And American consumers want larger vehicles; that’s why trucks and SUVs dominate the American market. Plug in electric vehicles like the Chevy Dolt Bolt are smaller, because manufacturers need to reduce size and weight to increase range.

The federal government and some states already offer tax credits and other incentives for the purchase of electric cars. But the main such federal incentive — a $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of new electric cars — begins to phase out for cars once an automaker has sold 200,000 E.V.s. Buyers of Tesla and G.M. electric cars, for example, no longer qualify for that tax credit but buyers of Ford and Volkswagen electric cars do.

Mr. Biden described his incentives for electric car purchases as rebates available at the “point of sale,” presumably meaning at dealerships or while ordering cars online. But the administration has not released details about how big those rebates will be and which vehicles they would apply to.

Let’s be honest here: new car buyers are wealthier than most Americans. In 2019, the last year before the pandemic hit, there were 40.8 million used cars sold, versus 17 million new vehicles, because used vehicles are much less expensive. President Biden’s plan calls for, in effect, taxing lower-income earners more to give a financial benefit to higher-income people, taxing working-class people to help pay for their bosses’ cars. What an absolutely great idea!

There’s considerably more at the Times original, but it’s pretty much what I have been saying all along: a whole lot of people do not have garages or secure, dedicated overnight parking spots in which they can have their own vehicle charging stations. Naturally, the Times looks at it from the perspective of a wealthier urban area, but when I look around the poorer area in eastern Kentucky where I live, I see older, not-as-well-kept-up homes, many of which have inadequate, 100 amp electric service — and not a few probably still have old fuse boxes instead — and I see people who have little prospect of buying a new car, having to depend on used vehicles.

Siemens US2 Versicharge electric car charger