US President Biden announced a $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan on March 31, including the construction of 500000 electric vehicle charging stations. In this regard, the U.S. media are generally more cautious, that Biden’s new energy road is not smooth.
Biden has given priority to the construction of electric vehicle charging network in its more than $2 trillion infrastructure plan, promising to build at least 500000 charging stations in the United States by 2030, CNBC reported on March 31.
The cost of building a charging station is a big problem. CNBC said, the average installation cost of the three-stage fast charging pile ranges from $120000 to $260000, according to Alex partners, a consulting firm. But at present, there is not enough demand for charging networks in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of energy, pure electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles account for only about 2% of the 17 million new vehicles sold in the United States in 2019. There are about 41400 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States, including less than 5000 fast charging stations. In contrast, there are more than 130000 traditional gas stations. Although automakers such as general motors and Volkswagen are investing heavily in improving the performance of electric vehicles and reducing their prices, they are not interested in building, owning and operating their own charging networks. Because the return on investment is out of proportion. Tesla has its own charging network, but partly to sell its own cars.
“The U.S. government is a huge customer, and their participation may push the U.S. electric vehicle industry to surpass China and become a world leader,” said Scott scrall, director of the Sustainable Energy Department of the Institute of environment and energy management at George Washington University, quoted by Reuters on April 1 However, there are also doubts that Biden’s plan is not large enough to shift consumers from fuel vehicles to electric vehicles. Tom Pyle, a former adviser to the trump administration, said 500000 charging stations could not meet half of California’s demand.
In contrast, the number of public charging points in Beijing alone will be as large as that in the United States in 2019, while the number in China will be eight times as large as that in the United States, according to the statistics of Bloomberg. Last December alone, 112000 public charging piles were installed in China, more than the national figure in the United States.
“In the Obama era, the Democratic Party was engaged in new infrastructure such as charging piles, but in the end, every move stopped after he standing down, and after trump took office, he messed up everything. Now Biden is starting to pull back and feel like he needs to work harder. ” In an interview with the global times on April 1, Zhong Shi, an auto industry analyst, said, “public infrastructure still needs government support and can’t be solved by the market alone. From the current point of view, Biden’s doing so is just to make up for the lessons of the past, but whether he does well or badly has little to do with China and has no direct impact, because China has already been ahead. “.
