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Comment by schnable | Hacker News Reader

Which investments in future GDP do you mean?

Education, health, infrastrucure, science.

Most government spending is just keeping old people alive and happy, and paying the interest on debt. Say what you want about, but its not an investment in the future.

The billions of dollars for 8 EV charging stations. That kind of investment.

Provably false, if you bother to get out of your echo chamber

https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/pete-buttigieg-did-not-sp...

I'm curious if you read the fact check?

The most charitable interpretation is 243 Chargers.

According to the AP[0] it's 214

[0] https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-electric-vehicle-charg...

This is like building a computer, getting it mostly done, and declaring it useless because it doesn’t turn on yet. Or complaining the Manhattan Project had produced zero nukes by early 1945.

It’s a decade long project, with phases and 50 different state governments doing the actual contracting. The Fed side is mostly funding and establishing the Tesla charger as the national standard - which required quite a bit of diplomacy to get all the car manufacturers onboard.

It is somewhat amusing timeline wise as a choice since the Manhattan Project ran from 1942 to 1946:

Jan 1942: Roosevelt authorizes the atomic bomb

Jul 1945 (55 months later): Trinity

Aug 1945 (56 months later): Little Boy

By comparison:

Nov 2021: IRA becomes law

Feb 2025 (40 months later): <250 charging points

But this would take 120 months to complete. What an interesting comparison.

“Things happen fast in wartime” is perhaps not the novel discovery you think it is.

Zero bombs in early 1945. What a waste of money!

Ah, so if they had the extra year they would have had charging stations everywhere. What a pity. All that money wasted because we didn't wait till August.

They invented a novel weapon in half the time your heroes dreamed of building a charging station.

> They invented a novel weapon in half the time your heroes dreamed of building a charging station.

It's a plan to build tens of thousands of charging stations, by 2030.

In all 50 states, with the states and local administrations being responsible for contracting, permiting, buying land, utility work, etc. Most of the work is not on the Feds here.

It should not be at all surprising that 10k+ little building projects take some time to get going. Even from the folks who credulously believed the President could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours.

So they came up with an overly complicated plan with little outcome and this is supposed to be amazing?

Oh hang on, I can do better. I have a plan to build 3 billion teleportation machines by 2045. This makes for a great mad libs set.

I have a plan to build thousands of Super Star Destroyers on Exegol by a long time ago.

I don't know how to explain to you that EV chargers exist, unlike teleporters and Star Destroyers.

But we have a plan, ceejayoz. We've got a plan. And ten years from now we'll have a plan and maybe one shed where we can build a teleporter, but always remember the bomb: in early 1945 there was no bomb.

The Interstate Highway System took like 36 years to build, wouldn't that be a better analogy, since it's an entity that exists in many different places at once? Whereas the bomb was built on eminent domain-seized property so you didn't have to deal with local jurisdictions or landowners.

That is a better analogy, yeah, and much more convincing. If this is delivering at an equivalent pace (same year had a state complete their I-70) then I am convinced.

I think your other comment about it being harder because it's an overly complicated plan doesn't convince me. The complexity and feasibility of a plan are also characteristics of its quality.

But this comment I buy. Color me convinced.

I didn't mean it was overly complicated so much as it's probably got more bickering stakeholders, as it involves private industry who presumably don't want Tesla to be able to dictate the standard.

Coming up with one would have been a reasonable outcome. Using Tesla's would also have been reasonable. They managed to sort out who to give EUV tech. But in any case the space of disagreement here isn't large enough to be worth arguing.

Well, maybe if the government declared a War on Climate Change or War on Lack of Charging Stations.

Haha, a tremendous idea. If war works, then use war.

There’s also the matter that the Manhattan Project was under one authority. As an ancestral comment mentioned, there’s multiple automakers involved. It would be trying to build a bomb and dealing with not only the gun type design vs. the implosion design but a bevy of others, whose proponents all have equal influence over Oppenheimer to stymie the effort.

Here’s the entire sentence:

> There are currently 214 operational chargers in 12 states that have been funded through the law, with 24,800 projects underway across the country, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

I can see why you omitted the context.

I'll give you a general tip for reading opinion pieces / fact checks (from generally reputable sources):

Any "fact" it claims which is bad for it's case, you can believe with > 90% probability

Any "fact" it uses to support it's case should be taken with a tablespoon of sodium.

For example in this case: 24,800 projects underway. I assume if many were mostly built then they would say "10,000 chargers expected to be operational by March".

If they were under construction at all, they would probably say "under construction" This is a statement from the Federal Highway Administration! it's PR! (as it should be, nothing wrong with tooting your own horn) and the most they claim is "underway".

Of course we won't get an investigative story about this, but I'd wager the vast majority is in the earliest possible stage (before even permits to build)

So, the criticism of Buttigieg is well founded, and the "misinformation" is more directionally correct then the "fact check"

I think it's the price per charger that's the important value here, and the original claim "billions of dollars for 8 EV charging stations" is indeed provably false (even if you amend it to 243 or 214 EV charging stations). The money hasn't been spent yet.

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