As Democrats and the Biden administration continue to rush headlong toward mass use of electric vehicles, California has taken the lead. But in many ways, it is also dropping the ball.
One constant for whatever vehicle you choose to drive is the need to power the thing. And like gas-powered cars, the need to have stations conveniently placed over the road to replace depleted power in an electric vehicle is a must for them to be useful.
California has prided itself on creating charging stations in many of the state’s largest cities. In fact, Los Angeles has really gone all out and now has a whopping 3,984 charging stations, of which more than 500 are free to use, according to PlugShare.
But L.A. has also found some of its charging stations running headlong into one of its most pervasive problems: homelessness.
A video from last year, for instance, shows that an entire street’s worth of charging stations were made unusable due to the garbage strewn around them by the homeless.
Thank you @MayorOfLA . pic.twitter.com/0wqDDwxbVL
— edmund dantes (@Edantes112) May 22, 2021
What EV owner is going to want to pull up next to all that garbage to use a charging station?
It probably isn’t a surprise that there are no cars in the parking spots, according to that video.
Another Twitter user noted that this is the same state that has decided to ban gasoline-powered cars.
California bans the sale of new gas-powered vehicles after 2035.
California charging stations:pic.twitter.com/m9NNoaDaxi
— Kevin Dalton (@KevinForBOS) August 26, 2022
The state has formalized its claim that gas-powered vehicles will no longer be permitted to be sold in the state starting in the year 2035. That is far enough off that it doesn’t really make any difference today — not to mention far enough off that it could easily be rescinded. But it does show the current resolve of the state’s Democrats to destroy the fossil fuels industry.
Resolve or no, the video of the charging stations crowded with homeless garbage shows what blue America looks like and is a sad example of how the left’s priorities clash to destroy each other and cancel out any “progress” they think they are making.
Some may counter this video by noting that most EV owners have charging stations at home, so maybe they don’t need L.A.’s homeless infested charging spots. And that is all well and good, if those EV owners don’t intend to drive too far from their homes on a regular basis.
Further, the need to gauge how far you are from home to be sure you can get back for a charge is just another way of having your freedom of movement curtailed. If you can’t simply jump in the car and go where you want and charge up as needed where ever you go, you don’t have the freedom to move around at will.
To liberals, this curtailment of freedom of movement isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.
Worse, installing charging stations is just another cost to drivers that gas-powered vehicles don’t have. Recently Cars.com paid to have six different kinds of home EV charging bases installed in the homes of their employees and found a range of prices and effectiveness. The costs ranged from $1,738 for the cheapest version mounted on the side of an employee’s house, to the $4,450 it cost to build a freestanding, curbside station, to $6,920 for a line to be run from the house to a detached garage. And that does not take into account the nearly $500 a year added to your home electric bill each year, as estimated by Business Insider.
That compared to the average 356 gallons of gasoline used per person, according to Sivak Applied Research, at a cost of an average $3.85 per gallon (per the AAA Gas Price tracker as of the writing of this article), which is about $1,370 a year in gasoline.
So, depending on which home charging station you install it can take nearly two years or as many as five and a half years to begin saving money on buying gas after paying off the installation of a charging station.
That also does not include the new “per mile” tax that many states are beginning to implement for EV users, according to Real Clear Investigations.
Even as California’s homeless crises worsens by the month and as the Democrats’ fantasy about “green” electric cars grows, the issues seen in the video above don’t seem any closer to a solution.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
