Elon Musk learns how EV charging works from Pete Buttigieg. Musk accused Buttigieg of “squandering billions” to build “8 charging stations.” Buttigieg tells Trump the post is “false.” The $7.5 billion has not yet been spent. Once granted, the states build the EV chargers, not the federal government.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/26/24306385/elon-musk-pete-buttigieg-nevi-funding-ev-chargers-explainer

by mafco

18 comments

  1. Musk is the perfect owner of Trump (or is it shared custody with Putin), always jumps to stupid conclusions first and pretends to be smart.

  2. Why do all the most popular Republican anti-EV talking points seem to be lies?

  3. Yeah, $7.5 billion for 8 chargers did sound like a stretch. Any explanation why it’s taking so long to deploy the money for actual chargers – I assume it would be 100k to 200k chargers? I mean 2030 seems like a far out goal…

  4. This really makes you wonder how much Musk actually know about his companies.

  5. If the money hasn’t been spent, then when does the money expire?

  6. Tesla runs 60K+ EV chargers. Guessing he knows at least a little something about the topic?

    Will this $7.5 billion result in another 60,000 available? Has no other EV manufacturer built out similar infrastructure?

  7. One of the biggest problems we have as a nation, allowing states to spend the money, versus handing it from the Fed level. Imagine how much money could be saved by getting rid of the many state level duplicate agencies.

    And, yes, I’m of why it is as it is. Thanks

  8. Gonna be interesting to see people that don’t understand how government works running government.

  9. Pete might be teaching him how slow and ineffective the government is at this, but that is about it.

    I’ve watched charging stations go up in less than a month in existing parking lots.

    I’m pretty sure Tesla is well aware what it takes, as they have done it more than anyone by many factors.

  10. Post title is from original so I can’t blame OP. But it’s 100% inaccurate. Should be “Elon Musk learns how congressional budgets and allotments work and the reasons for the delay”
    Elon knows far more about how EV charging works than Buttigieg.

  11. This discussion is funny because it gets real obvious how people have no idea what they are talking about, but like to have opinions anyways.

    It takes lots of time to set up programs to fund projects.

    After that, who gets the money? Maybe we should have people to bid on it.

    What are the bidding parameters? What are the hardware qualifications? What about software? Where will the chargers go? What utility upgrades are necessary? What about installer credentials? Who should be eligible? Who owns the property?

    In my area, certain utility grade transformers are backordered 12-18 MONTHS, because there is a data center boom going on that is gobbling up a lot of electrical equipment. So if new power needs to be brought to the site… that’s right, it could be a YEAR before the power can even be brought to the location of the chargers.

    Once all that gets done, it takes months/years for new contractors, manufacturers, and marketers to figure out how to make money in the space, and bring solutions to the market.

    I saw someone say they watched chargers get installed somewhere in a couple of months. That is a tiny fraction of the time involved in an EV charging project. Over a year of work could have happened before the concrete was even poured.

    But these chargers are now getting installed, at a frenetic pace, now that the market has figured out how to put them in and make money off of it.

    It’s funny to see articles say that only 8 fast chargers have been installed with incentive funding, when I know for a fact that is patently untrue, because I have personally seen over a dozen 4-8 charger publicly funded projects go into the ground, even in my little neck of the woods.

  12. Someone wasted that money and that’s the point. Musk has forgotten more about building charging infrastructure than Pete will ever know. Why do you want the us government to waste taxpayer dollars? Shouldn’t they be held accountable?

  13. Two common tenets of modern conservatives: 

    * Not having any idea how anything fucking works 

    * Bitching about it anyway 

  14. Trump will then be in position to take credit for this in a couple years.

  15. Mayor Pete verbally flaying this dipshit publicly is all I want for Christmas this year

  16. Yeah but I wanted to be irrationally mad at someone and feel like I’m smarter than other folks.

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