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Comment by dv_dt | Hacker News Reader

The US passed up multiple opportunities to fund its own more foundational solar industry

The US does a terrible job trying to throw government cash at problems. See: Solyndra, PPP, the US’s inability to build ships, or most recently the debacle of Biden’s $7.5B rollout of EV chargers that only managed to build a few dozen stations in 3 years.

This is exactly how the opportunities were passed up. I am convinced its in no small part because of the unrealistic expectations of a very high success ratio with a small number of experiments. The US throws a lot of money at relatively few bets while China funds entire competitive markets at smaller scales and lets the ecosystem vet them.

There is also political alignment in funding next generation technologies even if it's disruptive of established industries. Lobbying of fossil fuel industry did not stop renewable factory investments in China. Whereas in the US any failure of a renewable investment was highlighted by fossil fuel lobbyists as a pretense to stop the investments

PPP was a ton of small bets, with rampant fraud and waste (and a stupid fundamental idea).

The EV chargers were supposed to fund hundreds of stations in each of the 50 states: only a few dozen were built in 4 years.

If the government focuses on one big project, like the SLS, it becomes rife with pork and clumsily slow.

But there’s hardly a better track record with splitting a program up among applicants or states (see SNAP, rampant fraud in “autism” services, PPP, or homelessness in California)

> the debacle of Biden’s $7.5B rollout of EV chargers that only managed to build a few dozen stations in 3 year

You've fallen for disinformation.

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

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/dec/05/michael-ru...

You are wrongly claiming that I said spent. The $7.5B is allocated, half the time of the program has elapsed, and a few dozen chargers were built. The program, by any modern standard, was a failure.

From your own article: By early this year, only four states — Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Hawaii — had opened stations funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, The Associated Press reported in March. A Washington Post article published the next day said this amounted to just seven stations.“

So yes, a $7B+ allocation managed to only open a handful of stations in 3 years.

Meanwhile, in a similar 3 year period, China built the Beijing–Shanghai high speed rail line: approx. 3.5 years for ~1,300 km.

Are you really going to claim that the EV charger program has been the successful, rapid deployment necessary to enable a pivot to EVs?

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