That’s a good question. And this article from the Sacramento Bee is a rather interesting cautionary tale
California gave Teslas to an isolated farmworker community. Why did the cars vanish overnight?
In a small San Joaquin Valley neighborhood surrounded by miles of nut and citrus groves, six electric vehicle charging stations sit abandoned. Their parking spots are empty, their screens shattered.
Over five short months and with nearly $2 million, the state powered a fleet of Teslas and Chevy Bolts that lent residents of this isolated community a transportation lifeline. Then one day at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the cars vanished.
“Overnight, our means of transportation disappeared,” said Rosario Rodríguez, a resident of Cantua Creek. “We felt a lot of emotions all at once, because it left us defenseless. If we get sick or have a medical appointment, then what? What are we going to do?”
Nearly three years later, the electric cars are in Los Angeles and Rodríguez is back to relying on favors from friends to make the 30- minute commute to her nearest supermarket and hour-long drive to doctor’s appointments.
The vehicle chargers, once seen as an innovative solution to a woefully inadequate transportation system, are monuments to a bungled state program and the indignity endured by Rodríguez’s community when it briefly enjoyed, and then abruptly lost, a basic resource.
The community is 100% Latino, the average income is $36k, and it is pretty isolated from big box stores, grocery stores, and medical facilities (weird how so many other areas in the U.S. are isolated, be it the South, North, Midwest, Alaska, yet, can make it work in a way they can’t in the People’s Republik Of California). So, government came with a Helping Hand. Government gave them charging stations and 2 Tesla X’s and 2 Chevy Dolts, er, Bolts, and Government made a huge deal out of how magnanimous it was, and actually had more in the region.
So, what happened?
But Van y Vienen ended in April 2020, just four months after it began, as a precaution against the spread of COVID-19. To the disappointment of people in Cantua Creek, Green Commuter absorbed the vehicles into its Los Angeles fleet per terms of the grant.
Nearly three years later, none of the players involved take full responsibility for the project’s demise.
What government giveth it can taketh away(eth). If government is controlling your means of movement, it can yank it out from under you in a second. In this case, to keep citizens from being able to move during Wuhan Flu. And never restored it. Government says they do not have the funds to sustain it. But, of course, California can spend oodles of taxpayer money on illegal aliens, abortions, vacations for government employees, transgender madness, and other garbage.
Seriously, they could have bought a few commuter vans, and everything would have been fine, instead of expensive Tesla X’s. Seriously, $1.9 million for 4 cars and 9 charging stations? Regardless of the idiocy of government, especially the PRC’s government, the lesson is to not let government be in control of your ability to move.
Read: Say, Whatever Happened To The Teslas California Gave A Farming Community? »