Senator Cynthia Lummis Slams President Biden For Slow Deployment Of EV Charging Infrastructure In California

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) on Tuesday slammed President Joe Biden for permitting delays in deploying EV charging infrastructure in the state of California where EV adoption is highest.

What Happened: “Tell me, President Biden, how do you expect to power America's electric vehicles by 2030 if California, the state with the most EV's, is taking up to 9 years to power theirs?” Lummis wrote on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

“This unrealistic mandate puts CA years behind your schedule,” the Republican from Wyoming added.

Lummis is referring to the California Public Utilities Commission’s decision last week to allow Pacific Gas and Electric Company, San Diego Gas & Electric Company, and Southern California Edison Company 3,242 calendar days, or nearly nine years, to put up a new substation.

Why It Matters: California is the fastest adopter of EVs compared to the rest of the U.S. In the second quarter, 118,181 electric vehicles were sold in California and 390,036 across the country, meaning California accounts for about 30% of the country’s overall EV sales.

Last month, California Governor Gavin Newsom said that the number of EV chargers in the state has surpassed 150,000 including public and shared private chargers. Besides the public network, there are over 500,000 private home chargers in the state.

California is aiming to make all new car sales zero emission by 2035. The Biden government, meanwhile, is looking to make half of all new vehicles sold in the country by 2030 zero-emission vehicles and to build a charging network of 500,000 chargers.

According to the Department of Energy’s data center, there are currently over 196,000 public EV charging ports available across the U.S. at over 72,000 station locations. Of these, nearly 2000 ports have received permits or are under construction and nearly 11,000 are temporarily out of service or offline.

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