• AA5B@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Trick question: You need both.

    It’s not realistic to build the infrastructure first, then transition: no one could afford that. It would be a huge waste and a boondoggle.

    However I do think it was well planned: even the Chinese government would be surprised at our planning…… if we had actually followed through.

    In addition to the decades long transition, there was

    • subsidies for car manufacturers to retool and retrain
    • incentives for EV buyers
    • incentives for home charger installers, from consumer to landlord to business
    • infrastructure money to start building out trip chargers along interstates

    So yes, the infrastructure would have grown with the market, more smoothly than the market alone could have. Yes American companies would have solid business advantages in new technologies. Yes, American car companies would still be relevant at that point