The promised electric vehicle revolution is running out of juice.
But no one ever predicted it would turn out like this.
And an electric vehicle mandate was doomed to failure for one reason Democrats never saw coming.
Public charging stations doom Washington state’s electric vehicle mandate
Washington state passed the most ambitious electric vehicle mandate in the country, even surpassing California.
No new vehicle sold or registered after 2030 in the state can run on gasoline or diesel.
This mass transition to electric vehicles requires Washington to build a public charging network to support them.
The state needs to build three million charging ports and has to have a fast-charging port every 50 miles on state highways.
Currently, there are less than 200,000 charging ports in the entire United States, according to government data.
Washington already had an uphill battle to get to its goal of three million charging ports.
A Harvard Business School study found that one out of every charging port in the country doesn’t work.
“Imagine if you go to a traditional gas station and two out of 10 times the pumps are out of order,” Harvard climate fellow Omar Asensio said. “Consumers would revolt.”
Asensio said the public charging station problem was too big an obstacle for him to convince his mom to get an electric vehicle.
“I couldn’t even convince my mother to buy an EV recently,” Asensio stated. “Her decision wasn’t about the price. She said charging isn’t convenient enough yet to justify learning an entirely new way of driving.”
Washington is lighting taxpayer money on fire for electric vehicle scheme
The Washington EV Coordinating Council is the government agency in charge of planning the state’s electric vehicle agenda.
Unreliable public charging is a “substantial risk” to the state’s electric vehicle goals, according to the council.
Washington’s State Legislature ponied up $184 million to build 752 fast-charging ports across the state.
Taxpayers are going to be asked to build more charging stations than the state needs because they’re unreliable.
The Washington State Department of Commerce’s Clean Transportation plan cited the Harvard Business School study and one from J.D. Power in reaching this expensive conclusion.
“Given the current approximately 80% success rate of charging session, the state would need to overbuild total ports to reach the targets,” the Clean Transportation plan stated.
The plan says that public charging is the key to reaching the state’s electric vehicle goals.
“Public fast charging investments and reliability need stronger improvement,” the plan continues. “For consumers without experience using an EV, it is often not clear that most charging takes place at home unless such access is not feasible or driving exceeds 150-200 miles each day. This makes public charging convenience and reliability a key component of public willingness to make the transition to electric.”
The plan asks the State Legislature to cough up $103 million to help with the electric transition.
Washington’s electric vehicle mandate is doomed to fail because of a lack of public charging stations.
