Nevada’s Electric Folly

Much Ado About Three Chargers

Gather for a tale of woe and despair, a lamentation fit for the annals of history—or at least the more comical sections of it. The great state of Nevada, promised a kingly sum of $38 million to dot its highways with electric vehicle chargers, now finds itself bereft of these promised wonders.

The culprit? The Trump administration. They had the audacity—the unmitigated gall—to halt a program that had thus far produced three chargers in the Silver State. Yes, dear reader, the loss is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

Still ungraced with a fourth charger, Nevada highways must now languish in their current state, which, by all appearances, is not different from before the program began. And while 37 other states somehow found a way to allocate their funds, Nevada, beset by “unique challenges”–the uniqueness of which seems to have eluded much of the rest of the country–has found itself clutching a fistful of nothing.

The Nevada Department of Transportation, once poised to release its grand plan for charger deployment any day, was left gobsmacked when the federal spigot got turned off. One cannot help but wonder at the cruel irony: following years of meticulous planning, balancing “speed” with the grave responsibility of ensuring chargers would be “eligible for reimbursement,” the entire enterprise has been laid low before it could reach the dizzying heights of four completed stations.

Meanwhile, certain members of the Senate have risen in righteous indignation, penning letters to the Department of Transportation, decrying this egregious affront to progress. They cry foul, questioning the constitutionality of withholding funds Congress has already approved.

And perhaps they have a point—after all, there’s nothing more American than throwing vast sums of money at a problem and expecting results at some point in the indeterminate future.

But let us take a moment of silence for those three lonely chargers, Nevada’s foray into the electric age. They are relics of what might have been—a grand empire made of infrastructure, cut down before its prime.

Future generations will look back on this and mourn, contemplating what could have been should a few more millions and extra years come with the project. And so, Nevada finds itself back at square one, which, conveniently, is where it started.