In an attempt to encourage more Americans to use electric vehicles, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm set off on a four-day electric-vehicle road trip, however, a Georgia family ended up calling the police after one of Granholm’s staffers used a gas vehicle to hold an electric-vehicle charging spot for her.
Granholm set off on the road trip with the intent to travel from Charlotte, N.C. to Memphis Tenn. in electric vehicles, “to draw attention to the billions of dollars the White House is pouring into green energy and clean cars,” according to NPR. With the current green energy agenda being pushed, the current administration was hoping to use this as a way to encourage more Americans to use electric vehicles.
However, due to the large amount of vehicles in her entourage, including a Cadillac Lyriq, a Ford F-150, and a Bolt electric vehicle, her team ran into a problem facing EV drivers everywhere: a lack of fast-charging stations.
On one blisteringly hot day during a planned stop in a suburb of Augusta, Georgia, Granholm’s team realized there weren’t going to be enough stations to charge all of their vehicles, because one of the four charging stations was broken and others were being used.
One of Granholm’s staffers then, “tried parking a nonelectric vehicle by one of those working chargers to reserve a spot for the approaching secretary of energy,” NPR explained.
This resulted in a family, with a baby in their vehicle, calling local police after the staffers’ gas vehicle was blocking the only free EV charger at the station.
While local authorities couldn’t do anything to help the situation, the Secretary and her staff did move their vehicles to slower charging stations in an attempt to make room for the family.
This has been a common complaint among electric vehicle drivers — long road trips are made impossible by a severe lack of charging stations around the U.S.
Auto data specialists such as J.D. Power highlights how the public chargers are one of the main reasons why Americans are reluctant to make the switch to EVs.
J.D. Power also highlights how the public’s perception of charging stations is only getting worse. While one of the Energy Secretary’s main goals with this trip was to figure out what needed to be done to make EVs more usable, this is one of many examples of how difficult charging EVs would be if every American made the switch and another example of how important natural gas is for everyday transportation.
