I wholeheartedly believe, in order for electric vehicles to survive in the US, we will need government intervention not just simply in car subsidy. We will need some sort of infrastructure subsidy to make this happen. Either give incentive to gas station or even corporate buildings. Companies that provide more charging stations for employees to charge their cars during work gets bigger tax cuts. Also, the US will need to get rid of the gas tax and implement some sort of per mileage tax. Without these, I find it hard for electric cars to survive without destroying our current infrastructure.
I'd expect the utility/power companies to be on top of this, lobbying for it, already. Their centralized generation approach stands to gain as gasoline and the billion distributed combustion engines approach loses. It'd be in their self-interest to try to use their lobbying capabilities to accelerate that future.
It would be better to put the gasoline replacement tax on the utility companies and let them raise rates slightly to adjust for it. That's not only easier to do than building out a system for tracking & taxing all mileage in the US, it's also dramatically better for privacy reasons (as opposed to opening up another avenue for the government to invade our privacy by getting automated, mandated mileage tracking & reporting put into our electric vehicles). The US has relatively inexpensive energy prices, we can afford the slight increase in tax there, which would be offset by the erasure of the money spent on gasoline. The downside is, some will argue it's not fair to those not using electric vehicles on roads to be paying the tax increase (and that's correct, it's not a perfect tax distribution; it's an 85% good enough solution, that is a magnitude easier to implement and better for privacy).
Hmm, I have I only heard about statewide efforts. Even statewide, only a couple of states are investing in this technology (CA, NY, and TX). Are there federal incentives that I overlooked?
I didn't. That's why I asked if there was in order to clairfy any points I might of misunderstood. Unfortunately, the biggest transportation changes are done through a federal level particularly through the NHSTA. For instance, the highways system wash deemed foolish by many but we manage to make it a reality through the cooperation in a federal and state level.
Ah. That kind of fake "reply" really wrecks conversation -- you left me wondering if you had misunderstood, when instead you were just grinding your axe.
Huh, not sure how and what I am grinding my axe for? I was genuinely curious if there is a federal incentives provided that I don't know about which is very possible. For instance, for the 3D printing industry there are specific grants (free money essentially) to help small companies federally and state wide. Not sure why you find my intent replusive or with a hidden purpose.
As I said before, I don't have any information about new federal incentives -- I have owned an EV for 5.5 years and know about state and local incentives for everything you brought up... which is why I said "parts of the US".
Meanwhile, you made it clear in the other thread that you're mainly interested in federal incentives, which is what I was referring to as your axe. Nothing repulsive, just something unlikely to generate good conversation with people who have nothing to say about federal incentives.
There's about 10K supercharging stations in the US. There's amount 168K gas stations. The amount of super chargers is probably about the same as the measurement error for the 168K estimate.
I except that a significant portion of drivers will be able to drive at home. You don’t need as many gas stations in a world where over half the owners charge at home (or work)
Sorry, what's the purpose of this comment? Tesla has < 1% market share today, so it's hard to imagine why there would be a large number of superchargers today relative to gas stations.
Because the electric car market share will remain as it is without the intervention of the government (in the US). There is no way a single private company can overwhelm the whole gas car industry in its current state. The point of my comment is that the supercharger network is not adequate for the mass adoption of electric cars. The government will need to do more to incentive the growth of the infrastructure.
