Costly and Glitchy: A Taxpayer-Funded Electric Vehicle Odyssey

From Homer’s “Odyssey” to Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” great authors have often communicated timeless truths through tales of long journeys. Two years ago, a Biden administration official set out to make a point through her own long road trip. Her trip did make a point, but not the one she intended.

In the summer of 2023, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and a cadre of aides took a four-day road trip in electric vehicles (EVs) that meandered from Charlotte, N.C. to Memphis, Tenn. The trip was “intended to draw attention to the billions of dollars the White House is pouring into green energy and clean cars,” according to NPR’s Camila Domonoske, who accompanied the secretary’s convoy. Granholm would make her case at townhall stops along the route.

In reality, the road trip proved that EVs are not yet ready for prime time — at least in the epic road trip department. Or, in Domonoske’s gentle words, “Granholm’s entourage at times had to grapple with the limitations of the present.”

Worse, the trip blew out the budget and broke regulations left and right, according to a scathing report released Wednesday by the Department of Energy’s inspector general (IG).

The main problem with taking an electric vehicle — or three electric vehicles, like Granholm — on a long road trip is that you can’t just pull up to any roadside service station and fill ‘er up. As the secretary’s team discovered upon their southeastern zig-zag, charging stations are sparse and can take up to an hour to charge a battery — if they’re even working at all.

Despite meticulously planning the route ahead of time to optimize vehicle charging, the secretary repeatedly encountered obstacles. At one stop, a charging station showed a black screen. At another, a station charged at a third of the expected rate.

The worst snafu occurred in Grovetown, Ga., a suburb of Augusta. Granholm’s team had planned a stop with four charging stations. When the advance team — who drove regular, gas-powered cars (called “ICE” cars for their internal combustion engine), one station was broken, and others were occupied. The team parked an ICE car in the spot to reserve it for the secretary, to keep her on schedule.

Meanwhile, a family with an infant in the car showed up to charge their vehicle — only to find a gas-powered vehicle blocking the only usable charging spot. (To make matters worse, the day was sweltering and sultry — a typical summer day in the South.) The family called the police, but the sheriff’s office could legally take no action because it isn’t illegal for a gas-powered car to park in an electric charging spot in Georgia. The secretary’s staff did try to smooth over the situation, moving the vehicle, and putting EVs on slower chargers so that the secretary could still get a quick charge.

Meanwhile, an electric BMW pulled up to charge. The driver of that vehicle, John Ryan, had to wait his turn until everyone in line ahead of him was finished. “It’s just par for the course,” he told the NPR reporter.

“Par for the course”? Not at a gas station.

“Clearly, we need more high-speed chargers, particularly in the South,” reflected Granholm after the trip. But never fear! The Biden administration has invested $7.5 billion into building more public EV charging stations. “By the end of this year, I think we’ll start to see [those chargers] popping up along the charging corridors,” said Granholm.

That was in the summer of 2023. In March 2024, The Washington Post reported that those $7.5 billion had built a total of seven EV charging stations, more than two years after Congress had allocated the money.

But the saga didn’t end when Granholm reached her final destination. The House Oversight Committee caught wind of the problem-pocked program and demanded answers. In a September 26, 2023 letter, committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) pointed out that the trip failed to showcase the reliability and effectiveness of EV travel.

“At every point on this journey, you relied upon ICE vehicles using gasoline to try to boost the charade of the effectiveness of green energy,” the letter argued. “According to NPR, DOE staff and Secret Service used ICE vehicles while supporting your EV ‘caravan.’ Your fleet of EVs could not complete the trip without the support of the fossil fuel industry which you and the Biden Administration have been intent to vilify and destroy.”

At the request of the Oversight Committee, the Energy Department’s inspector general launched an audit of the trip. On Wednesday, that audit “determined that 36 of the 42 travel vouchers (86 percent)” for the trip “contained lodging expenses that exceeded Government per diem rates.” Some of these vouchers did not use government-issued travel cards as required by law, exceeded tip limits, recorded the wrong location and date, gave insufficient justifications, or failed to cost comparisons for other locations.

In all, the trip cost taxpayers nearly $125,000.

Secretary Granholm’s EV trip was too expensive, encountered constant problems, and needed to be propped up by outside support. In this sense, it is an allegory for the EV industry itself. Why else did Granholm need to embark on such a PR stunt?

“If EVs are as much of an improvement as their boosters claim, they will steadily win market share, and the infrastructure to support that growing market share will grow naturally alongside it (as Tesla has demonstrated),” argued Andrew Stuttaford in National Review. “Moreover, by being forced to compete for a longer period against internal combustion engine cars that are themselves continually improving, EV manufacturers would have every incentive to improve their product (and probably its pricing) much more than would otherwise be the case. Competition works in a way that central planning does not.”