3 ms·

There was a giant federal subsidy for charging infrastructure in the infrastructure bill that passed a few years ago. I wonder how that's going... https://www.

by api 3y ago

There was a giant federal subsidy for charging infrastructure in the infrastructure bill that passed a few years ago. I wonder how that's going... https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/05/congress-ev-chargers-billions-00129996 https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/05/congress-ev-charger... A few months old, but I doubt that much has changed. I think I heard a few came online, so that's over $1B per charger. Maybe they are made out of solid gold and sculpted by hand. The problem as usual is that we can't build things anymore. This is a civilization scale existential risk problem at this point. It's not just EV chargers. I wonder how many decades (plural) the Baltimore bridge will take to replace? Edit: I still don't fully understand why we can't build things anymore. It's tempting to say regulation but the EU has a lot more regulation than we do and they at least seem capable of building things when they feel like it. Neither China nor Russia are paragons of free market liberalism, and they are able to build things. India is known for batshit crazy levels of bureaucracy and they can build things. We have some private companies that can execute, of course, but overall our society seems to excel at rent extraction and delaying things for more rent extraction.

kevingadd 3y ago
[flagged]
- _heimdall 3y ago
  What you're describing is misaligned incentives, not a fundamental and unique failure of a society. The question is why our incentives are setup such that greed, exploitation, etc. are favored over other traits. Of course we will always have some level of people doing what they think is right even if it goes against the incentives in place. A system can't be stable when it depends on that though, if we want society acting less greedy we'll only get there by changing the game rather than being angry that people are figuring out the rules already set and trying to win.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
lotsofpulp 3y ago
China obviously can build things, but I don’t know how you can compare India to the US. It’s far more of a shit show there, with things getting tied up in courts for even longer than the US. And I would not trust the quality as much either. Building things is easier with cheaper labor, fewer environmental and safety concerns, and fewer property rights, all of which the US does not have anymore.
- api 3y ago
  Point taken about India, probably a bad example. As for the rest -- EU can build things and has similar labor costs or even higher in some cases due to more unions and bureaucracy around them. China's labor costs are lower than ours but they are no longer bargain-basement-low. Autocracy certainly makes it easier to build some types of things like trains, but EV chargers do not require autocratic land appropriation. Hell it'd be pretty easy to sell stores and restaurants on allowing them in their parking lots because customers are likely to come inside and shop or grab a meal while the car is charging. This is why you can very often find chargers in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    On this specific issue, I would bet electric vehicles and electric chargers are not priorities for swing voters. Announcing it might offer some cheap political points, but spending the resources to implement and execute it might not be seen as worthwhile because at the end of the day, most US voters, especially the important ones in swing states, don’t care. People are generally happy with the cost and qualities of their gas vehicles, or hybrid vehicles. If I was buying a car right now, I’d be looking at gas or hybrid too. They are proven to work and maintain value for a couple decades now. I’ll let others beta test EVs for another decade. I certainly would not rent one.
ourmandave 3y ago
The fed set a high bar (97% reliability) and a station every 50 miles along interstates. Then there's state regs with some states (like Ohio) already well along before the bill passed. And you have to plan the network and manufacturers have to ramp up. We can build it fine, eventually.
Dalewyn 3y ago
>Neither China nor Russia are paragons of free market liberalism, and they are able to build things. Dictatorships perform exceedingly well in executing top-down schemes. In the lands of the free that is the US and most of the western world, we can pass laws and dangle bags of cash to entice society, but the executive can't do much beyond begging for everyone to please spend the cash before the legislature comes to ask questions. Meanwhile over in the land of the dictators, if the dictator wants five bajillion chargers by tomorrow then bah gawd you will build five bajillion chargers by tomorrow because you won't exist tomorrow if you don't.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- _heimdall 3y ago
  The major caveat here is that dictatorships (and similar) are entirely dependent on the assumption that the few at the top will largely make the right decision for all of their society. By cutting out everyone else they lose diversity of thought and experience and risk failing miserably when the dictator(s) make the wrong choice.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Most often the dictator is making the right decision for their personal life. IF they build anything useful for the people at all it is because they want to avoid a riot (bad for their personal life), or what a monument for how great they are.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
    That sounds like a rather benevolent "dictatorship." I wouldn't expect the "average dictator" to give two shits what people want.
    - _heimdall 3y ago
      Well personally I'm pretty cynical, I also don't expect much benevolence from a dictator. There are examples of it in history though. While I don't want to live under a dictatorship, I'd argue that a dictator will only be as good as the system that put them into power. A huge issue we have today in the US is that our political system is so broken and corrupt that the only people willing to work their way to the top are ones we likely wouldn't want to have power. It may be a democracy of sorts, but if the system is broken the leadership will match regardless of how many/few are in charge.
ksherlock 3y ago
As of last week, 7. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-s-75-billion-investment-in-ev-charging-has-only-produced-7-stations-in-two-years/ar-BB1kI8y7 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-s-75-billion-i...
roneythomas6 3y ago
Well when congress passed the bill they have allocated 7.5 billion for charging infrastructure. They haven't fully spend the money. Of which 5 billion is towards states to apply for the funding. States need to apply for this. So far only Hawaii, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania have applied and built their stations(7 stations in total for 38 stalls) another 4 states have also applied and is under construction. Twelve additional states have awarded contracts for constructing the charging stations. Then you have 17 states that have not yet issued proposals. The remaining 2.5 billion is allocated for DoE, which will allocate funding based on proposals it receives.
- bluGill 3y ago
  7.5 billion sounds like a lot of money, but even at the most reasonable costs it doesn't build many charging stations. You need to buy land, the chargers, install electric service to the land, install the chargers, build the parking spaces - that is at minimum. Realistically you really should be building restrooms and something to do while waiting for the charge (think play ground and walking path - though stores and restaurants are also useful)
  - roneythomas6 3y ago
    These are grants and isn't meant to fully cover the cost. Depending on who is going to own the station. They also need to chip in the cost. Just like how EV tax credit works.
foobarxyzzy 3y ago
To say that the EU has more regulation is not necessarily true. Let me give you an example. Suppose that i want to create a custom cellular device to control some process in the field. In the EU I pretty much just need to get a CE mark, whereas in the US, I need: - FCC - UL or ETL (now this is "voluntary" but if you deploy a non listed product in to some environements, you will be taking your company's life in your hands - PTCRB - this is a cellular industry certification - carrier approval for each carrier that i want to deploy on (verizon, etc) Now some will rightly point out that there are faster ways of doing the above like using modules with modular certification, but you need to pay $$$ for this. Folks don't see UL, PTCRB and carrier approvals as "regulations" because they are not government mandated. However, they are just as detrimental to innovation as anything that is driven by government. As a developer of technology products, I also see more and more that US customers are terrified of custom hardware, or even anything physical - they just want to create cloud-based software systems that site in a datacenter that they do not own, running on virtual servers. They are often quite happy to give loads of margin over to folks selling and installing off-the-shelf hardware solutions that are often sub-optimal in terms of functionality, just so they can stay away from the scary physical stuff.
bluGill 3y ago
We can build things when we want. However we have noticed that just building isn't always right. Urbanists often point to what Robert Moses did to New York City - he was able to build and he built a lot, but in order to build a lot he bulldozed a lot of the city which people object to, and many think he built the wrong things. So we put roadblocks in place to ensure there is more time to object should someone like him come along. Of course that means things we should build don't get built. The other half of this is often we do not want. Many things that you think we should want to build are not important to the people in charge, and so they don't do anything. What matters to congress isn't that we build something it is that we use a lot of consultants and union jobs to build it - both those groups donate a lot to campaigns. (I call this corruption - you decide what you think). Note that congress doesn't care care what gets built in the end of it serves a useful purpose, just that we use a lot of consultants and union labor to build it. Blow up the costs by building a massive monument - this looks great at the ribbon cutting so congress loves it never mind that the costs mean we can't build very much.

by api 3y ago

kevingadd 3y ago

[flagged]

_heimdall 3y ago
What you're describing is misaligned incentives, not a fundamental and unique failure of a society. The question is why our incentives are setup such that greed, exploitation, etc. are favored over other traits. Of course we will always have some level of people doing what they think is right even if it goes against the incentives in place. A system can't be stable when it depends on that though, if we want society acting less greedy we'll only get there by changing the game rather than being angry that people are figuring out the rules already set and trying to win.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

lotsofpulp 3y ago

China obviously can build things, but I don’t know how you can compare India to the US. It’s far more of a shit show there, with things getting tied up in courts for even longer than the US. And I would not trust the quality as much either. Building things is easier with cheaper labor, fewer environmental and safety concerns, and fewer property rights, all of which the US does not have anymore.

api 3y ago
Point taken about India, probably a bad example. As for the rest -- EU can build things and has similar labor costs or even higher in some cases due to more unions and bureaucracy around them. China's labor costs are lower than ours but they are no longer bargain-basement-low. Autocracy certainly makes it easier to build some types of things like trains, but EV chargers do not require autocratic land appropriation. Hell it'd be pretty easy to sell stores and restaurants on allowing them in their parking lots because customers are likely to come inside and shop or grab a meal while the car is charging. This is why you can very often find chargers in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  On this specific issue, I would bet electric vehicles and electric chargers are not priorities for swing voters. Announcing it might offer some cheap political points, but spending the resources to implement and execute it might not be seen as worthwhile because at the end of the day, most US voters, especially the important ones in swing states, don’t care. People are generally happy with the cost and qualities of their gas vehicles, or hybrid vehicles. If I was buying a car right now, I’d be looking at gas or hybrid too. They are proven to work and maintain value for a couple decades now. I’ll let others beta test EVs for another decade. I certainly would not rent one.

ourmandave 3y ago

The fed set a high bar (97% reliability) and a station every 50 miles along interstates. Then there's state regs with some states (like Ohio) already well along before the bill passed. And you have to plan the network and manufacturers have to ramp up. We can build it fine, eventually.

Dalewyn 3y ago

>Neither China nor Russia are paragons of free market liberalism, and they are able to build things. Dictatorships perform exceedingly well in executing top-down schemes. In the lands of the free that is the US and most of the western world, we can pass laws and dangle bags of cash to entice society, but the executive can't do much beyond begging for everyone to please spend the cash before the legislature comes to ask questions. Meanwhile over in the land of the dictators, if the dictator wants five bajillion chargers by tomorrow then bah gawd you will build five bajillion chargers by tomorrow because you won't exist tomorrow if you don't.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
_heimdall 3y ago
The major caveat here is that dictatorships (and similar) are entirely dependent on the assumption that the few at the top will largely make the right decision for all of their society. By cutting out everyone else they lose diversity of thought and experience and risk failing miserably when the dictator(s) make the wrong choice.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Most often the dictator is making the right decision for their personal life. IF they build anything useful for the people at all it is because they want to avoid a riot (bad for their personal life), or what a monument for how great they are.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  That sounds like a rather benevolent "dictatorship." I wouldn't expect the "average dictator" to give two shits what people want.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    Well personally I'm pretty cynical, I also don't expect much benevolence from a dictator. There are examples of it in history though. While I don't want to live under a dictatorship, I'd argue that a dictator will only be as good as the system that put them into power. A huge issue we have today in the US is that our political system is so broken and corrupt that the only people willing to work their way to the top are ones we likely wouldn't want to have power. It may be a democracy of sorts, but if the system is broken the leadership will match regardless of how many/few are in charge.

ksherlock 3y ago

As of last week, 7. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-s-75-billion-investment-in-ev-charging-has-only-produced-7-stations-in-two-years/ar-BB1kI8y7 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-s-75-billion-i...

roneythomas6 3y ago

Well when congress passed the bill they have allocated 7.5 billion for charging infrastructure. They haven't fully spend the money. Of which 5 billion is towards states to apply for the funding. States need to apply for this. So far only Hawaii, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania have applied and built their stations(7 stations in total for 38 stalls) another 4 states have also applied and is under construction. Twelve additional states have awarded contracts for constructing the charging stations. Then you have 17 states that have not yet issued proposals. The remaining 2.5 billion is allocated for DoE, which will allocate funding based on proposals it receives.

bluGill 3y ago
7.5 billion sounds like a lot of money, but even at the most reasonable costs it doesn't build many charging stations. You need to buy land, the chargers, install electric service to the land, install the chargers, build the parking spaces - that is at minimum. Realistically you really should be building restrooms and something to do while waiting for the charge (think play ground and walking path - though stores and restaurants are also useful)
- roneythomas6 3y ago
  These are grants and isn't meant to fully cover the cost. Depending on who is going to own the station. They also need to chip in the cost. Just like how EV tax credit works.

foobarxyzzy 3y ago

To say that the EU has more regulation is not necessarily true. Let me give you an example. Suppose that i want to create a custom cellular device to control some process in the field. In the EU I pretty much just need to get a CE mark, whereas in the US, I need: - FCC - UL or ETL (now this is "voluntary" but if you deploy a non listed product in to some environements, you will be taking your company's life in your hands - PTCRB - this is a cellular industry certification - carrier approval for each carrier that i want to deploy on (verizon, etc) Now some will rightly point out that there are faster ways of doing the above like using modules with modular certification, but you need to pay $$$ for this. Folks don't see UL, PTCRB and carrier approvals as "regulations" because they are not government mandated. However, they are just as detrimental to innovation as anything that is driven by government. As a developer of technology products, I also see more and more that US customers are terrified of custom hardware, or even anything physical - they just want to create cloud-based software systems that site in a datacenter that they do not own, running on virtual servers. They are often quite happy to give loads of margin over to folks selling and installing off-the-shelf hardware solutions that are often sub-optimal in terms of functionality, just so they can stay away from the scary physical stuff.

bluGill 3y ago

We can build things when we want. However we have noticed that just building isn't always right. Urbanists often point to what Robert Moses did to New York City - he was able to build and he built a lot, but in order to build a lot he bulldozed a lot of the city which people object to, and many think he built the wrong things. So we put roadblocks in place to ensure there is more time to object should someone like him come along. Of course that means things we should build don't get built. The other half of this is often we do not want. Many things that you think we should want to build are not important to the people in charge, and so they don't do anything. What matters to congress isn't that we build something it is that we use a lot of consultants and union jobs to build it - both those groups donate a lot to campaigns. (I call this corruption - you decide what you think). Note that congress doesn't care care what gets built in the end of it serves a useful purpose, just that we use a lot of consultants and union labor to build it. Blow up the costs by building a massive monument - this looks great at the ribbon cutting so congress loves it never mind that the costs mean we can't build very much.