DOT approves $100M to fix the nation’s broken EV chargers

From the actual Notice of Funding Opportunity[0], state and local governments have to apply for this money, which can cover both public and private chargers.

So one problem with this is that your government actually has to care about sustaining EV adoption, which a lot of them don't.

[0] https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppI...

As part of the settlement with the US over the emissions scandal, Volkswagen agreed to invest in developing Electrify America.

What they did was to subcontract with multiple vendors who could not agree on integrating their sloppy systems, so we ended up with unreliable EV charging stations running on different hardware and software managed by multiple companies with complete lack of oversight by the federal government who now wants to throw another $100M at it so the money can be stolen again.

Everyone here nitpicking the trees are missing the forest: EVs are necessary to reduce CO2 output, but consumers don't want them if charging is a pain in the ass. Resolving chicken vs egg problems for the good of the nation is exactly the proper role of a well functioning government.

Surely it's obvious to everyone how bad of an idea this is, right? You can't just preferentially subsidize the worst functioning utilities and expect this not to produce negative incentives. If you want to subsidize public charging, subsidize public charging, don't subsidize public charging utilities being broken.

is that a lot?

Do they do this for gas terminals? One got hit by a car near where I work a few weeks back. I doubt the government is paying to replace it; the gas station is. Why aren't ev owners paying for these?