State governments have begun allocating billions of dollars to prepare for increased demand for electric vehicles and the subsequent need for manufacturing plants and charging stations.
Rivian, a maker of electric vehicles, is planning to open a large-scale facility in Georgia, Ford has announced a Tennessee facility that will likely cost billions, and Toyota previously stated it will establish its first battery plant in North America in North Carolina.
According to Wards Intelligence, more than 434,000 electric vehicles and 801,000 hybrid vehicles were purchased by Americans in the last year, causing zero-emission vehicles to make up about 5.4% of auto sales in the third quarter of 2021, an increase of about two percentage points compared to the year before.
"We want people to buy electric vehicles," Utah GOP Gov. Spencer Cox told The Hill. "And if we want to encourage people to buy electric vehicles, then we have to make sure that we have the infrastructure available for people to buy electric vehicles so they can actually get the cars charged and not get stuck somewhere.
"As a conservative, I absolutely believe that the market is going to drive this and the market is going to help us," he added. "That's how we're going to get broad adoption and broad change. We have to allow market forces to do what market forces are doing. It's already happening.
Vice chair of the Electric Auto Association and the co-founder of the Golden Gate Electric Vehicle Association Marc Geller added to The Hill, "we are seeing an increasing number of states looking at this."
"There's not a state that thinks this is not going to happen on some level. It's a question of how fast," Geller said.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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