California Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing ahead with $1.9 billion in state spending on a public electric vehicle charging network as EV sales plummet.
The state aims to build 40,000 chargers, compared to the just over 10,000 EV fast chargers it currently has. [emphasis, links added]
“Our clean transportation future is here with more than 1 in 4 new cars sold in our state being electric. That’s why California is building a bigger and better zero-emission charging network – the most extensive in the nation,” said Newsom in a statement.
Should the state spend the allocated $1.7 billion out of the $1.9 billion on 30,000 chargers, each charger will cost nearly $60,000.
California EV sales fell 10% in the last quarter of 2023 compared to the previous quarter, and another 3% in the quarter before that after skyrocketing over the prior decade.
Subsidies bring the cost of a new Tesla Model 3 to under $20,000 for qualifying California residents.
Given that Americans pay $47,401 on average for a new car, and gas prices in California — $4.62 per gallon, compared to $3.08 per gallon nationwide — are only higher in Hawaii, affordability does not appear to be driving the EV sales decline.
Under California’s mandate banning sales of fossil-fuel vehicles by 2035, ZEVs must reach 35% of sales by model year 2026.
Today, ZEVs represent 25% of vehicle sales, suggesting the state’s goal of increasing EV sales by 40% over today by the latter half of 2025 will be a significant challenge.
With 21% of public EV chargers not functioning due to “unresponsive or unavailable screens, payment system failures, charge initiation failures, network failures, or broken connectors,” investing in charging infrastructure could improve the availability of functioning chargers, but it’s not clear how state-funded chargers will change these underlying issues.
Another point of contention for consumers is EVs are not yielding reliability improvements over gas-powered vehicles — Consumer Reports found EVs have 79% more reliability problems than gas-powered competitors.
Newsom intends on spending $10 billion towards ZEVs, not including billions more in federal spending. But with EV charging technologies rapidly changing, cumbersome state-directed funding could lock in last-generation technology.
Read rest at Just The News
Newsom is so stupid
Just replaced a 13 year old diesel with a newer diesel. Dealer told me people, here in the UK, are not buying secondhand EVs. The only interest comes from business users who want the tax breaks and they only lease.
Newsom is a Nit-Wit and so are those who support this EV nonsense
BS article
Data mining
US BEV sales up +50% in 2023
There is a seasonal buying trend that declines from mid-December to mid-March. The third quarter is usually stronger than the fourth quarter in every year
There is no EV sales collapse except in the author’s feeble imagination
BS comment. You’ve heard that Ford and GM dealers have convinced corporate heads to back off EV production, they’re not parking lots for bad ideas. I’d like to say that I’ll never buy a battery-only vehicle, but it’s a fact that I’m buying them for parasites through taxes that should go towards health care, PROPER education, etc.