Buttigieg Spent $7.5B To Build 8 Car Charging Stations

President Joe Biden and his Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg pledged to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States by 2030 but will leave office having only built 8 operational ones despite spending $7.5 billion on the project.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, signed by Biden in November 2021, allocated $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging, $5 billion of which was dedicated to building a network of chargers along major highways, called the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program.

However, only 8 EV charging stations are currently operational across four states.

During an interview earlier this year with CBS News’ Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan, Buttigieg was asked, “The Federal Highway Administration says only seven or eight charging stations have been produced with a $7.5 billion investment that taxpayers made back in 2021. Why isn’t that happening more quickly?”

Buttigieg replied, “So the President’s goal is to have half a million chargers up by the end of this decade. Now, in order to do a charger, it’s more than just plunking a small device into the ground. There’s utility work. And this is also really a new category of federal investment. But we’ve been working with each of the 50 states. Every one of them is getting … dollars to do this work… Again, by 2030, 500,000 chargers and the very first handful of chargers are now already being physically built.”

At the time, according to the Federal Highway Administration, only seven operational charging stations with 38 charging spots existed but an analysis by Atlas Public Policy revealed that the funding should have paid for 20,000 charging spots or approximately 5,000 stations. The only operational stations are in Hawaii, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and others are being built in four additional states.

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