Current F150 and F200 drivers don't need this, and so it didn't help working class petrol heads. Poor people who drive EV don't exist.
The idea of highways being a commons, and charging being public investment which needs seeding to help transform an economy away from gas at scale is not only anathema to a small government party view, it's expressly against the interests of people interested in continuance of an oil based economy. BTW, Musk probably does not care nor influenced the decisions much. He didn't need to. If he did seek to e.g. get charge stations for electric trucks at scale he might have pushed back but it's not a key fight I suspect. Logistics companies will do the lobbying for him, if the need arises.
Tesla funded their initial Supercharger network buildout using margin from Model S and X sales. This was a requirement to sell these vehicles to well to do buyers who want to road trip and would not tolerate anything but fast charging. Tesla spent over $1B to build out the global Supercharger network. Other automakers could not be bothered. Electrify America was a compliance requirement for VW's Dieselgate; they were not required to build a good network, they were required to spend a dollar amount (which is why it was unreliable and rife with horror stories by users who attempted to rely on it). Tesla then licensed access this network, that they built and invested capital in, to every other automaker in the US (because to sell EVs, you must solve for range anxiety and road trip travel logistics). Tesla gets compensation for what they built and operate, legacy auto gets a chance at survival by making it easier to convince buyers to buy their EVs.
Without saturating highways with EV charging, it is a much harder sell to the masses (again, range anxiety). We fund highways with federal dollars (which will still be spent on highways even for combustion vehicles), why not fast DC charger deployment? It is straightforward to recoup both capex and opex through usage billing (which Tesla demonstrates current state with the Supercharging network).
With all of that said, this admin is very pro fossil fuels and anti anything EV and renewables, so that is likely the input into this decision. EVs will eventually get into the hands of those less well off as prices come down, and Americans will still drive long distances, so this only delays the inevitable (which is unfortunate, but very on brand, "you can always count on America to do the right thing after exhausting all other options"). If the argument is these dollars aren't being efficiently spent, sure, put someone in charge who will make it more efficient without handing the funds over to Tesla and demonstrate improved efficiency transparently.
https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity-locations#/find/ne...
(tesla owner, early tsla investor, electrification enthusiast, etc)
Personally, I think it's short sighted.
> Personally, I think it's short sighted.
Absolutely. This Is America. It'll come back to bite us, but when the meal is served, those who ordered will already have left the table.
https://www.autoweek.com/news/a60702457/federal-funds-yield-...
1. Abuse of power for a personal vendetta against the states that care about building it and against the legislators who voted for it.
2. Part of a broader set of EOs to demonstrate presidential "power" or activity against things his supports don't like, even if it's unsustainable or destructive. Watch for "we went in and we stopped X bajillion very terribly wasteful tax dollars", where the truth is either "it only paused things" or "by ripping up the Constitution."
3. Abuse of power to create leverage (i.e. extortion) against a certain associate of his that owns a company which could benefit a lot from charging stations.
4. Procedural version of #2: Trying to fudge the numbers on federal spending (even just temporarily) to make it fiscally "okay" for Republicans to pass another tax cut on the rich.
5. Someone recently convinced him it was pork-barrel spending, and he's "honestly" trying to stop it except in the most wannabe-dictator way.