The regime has been taking a bit of stick about its "policy" of 10,000 new EV chargers, which seemed to have no tracking and no actual means of achieving it. So they've finally been forced to announce something: $50 million in loans to Meridian and ChargeNet to build a quarter of the chargers they'd promised. As a policy it doesn't stink, and has the virtue (to National) of being cheap (a loan from the government is just creating a pair of matching asset and debt entries in the government books, and costs nothing). It might even see some chargers built, which would be good. But its also a solution to the wrong problem.
National's "10,000 new chargers" policy is from 2023, which was a different era as far as EVs are concerned. And its rooted in thinking which is even older, when EVs were short-range luxury vehicles for urban elites. That wasn't really true in 2023, and its certainly not true now; when new EVs have comparable range to fossil vehicles, "range anxiety", the problem the new EVs policy was supposed to solve, simple ceases to be an issue. Sure, we want a comprehensive nationwide network so that vehicles can always get to a charger if they need one. But with most people charging at home, its not the big problem it once was.
So what is the problem? The same as it was before: price (though this is less of an issue now than it was in 2023, because EVs are cheaper as well as better). We had a perfectly good policy targetted at that problem, in the form of the clean car discount, which was self-funding (or meant to be) by charging dirty vehicles to fund clean ones. And that was a good idea, reflecting the significant positive externalities for EVs (and negative ones for fossil vehicles) in the form of emissions, air pollution, public health, and energy security.
But National scrapped that policy. And "10,000 new chargers" was meant to be just rhetorical cover for doing so. "Sure, we're refusing to act on the biggest barrier, but we'll totally act on the imaginary one our outdated preconceptions have invented, and we'll pretend that's the same". But it wasn't the same, and then they didn't do shit about it for two years anyway. Now they've finally been forced to do something, but all it does is expose the massive inadequacy of their policy and the paucity of their thinking. And looking down the barrel of an American fossil fuel crisis, that is something we should absolutely hold them to account for.
