During one leg of the June trip, NPR reported Sunday, Granholm planned to stop at a public charging station outside of Augusta, Georgia, before continuing northwest to Athens. Before Granholm arrived, however, her staff realized the station would not be able to accommodate Granholm’s caravan—one charger was broken and others were in use. Granholm’s team responded by using a gas-powered car to block the public from accessing the station’s only available charger, prompting one family—which had a baby in the car on a hot Georgia day—to call the police.
The revelation reflects the electric vehicle issues that are plaguing the Biden administration’s prized green energy transition. President Joe Biden has worked to spur EV adoption by spending hundreds of billions of dollars on charging infrastructure and other green subsidies, but the effort is yet to deliver a reliable public charging experience for everyday Americans. Public charging stations are often broken and crowded, and when they do work, it can still take hours to fully charge a vehicle.
Still, those issues did not stop Granholm in May from advising road-tripping Americans to purchase an electric vehicle. Beyond the charging woes associated with the vehicles, that purchase is an expensive one—Granholm’s June caravan of EVs included a Ford F-150 Lightning and a Cadillac Lyriq, according to NPR, both of which can cost upwards of $60,000. As a result, less than one-fifth of Americans say they’re very likely to make their next vehicle an electric one, according to an Associated Press poll published in April.
I’m pretty sure that Veep and Parks and Recreation weren’t meant to be how to guides for politicians.