Martha’s Vineyard is a remarkable place—a quaint little island of elites where the median home price is around 1.5 million. Barry Obama has a massive estate there, as do many well-heeled elites (despite the alleged risk of rising sea levels). And now they are eligible for subsidies (your money, not theirs) to add EV charging infrastructure.
The Biden administration is classifying some of the country’s most elite and exclusive locales as “low-income” areas, making them eligible for electric vehicle (EV) charger subsidy programs.
The administration’s EV charger tax credit program — made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill — is specifically designed to route subsidies to “low-income” or “non-urban” areas of the country. The “low-income” emphasis for eligibility aligns in spirit with the Biden administration’s wider pursuit of so-called “environmental justice,” which is effectively the combination of social justice ideology and green policy.
The handouts reduce the cost of EV charging infrastructure (public or private) in low-income or non-urban areas by about a third, including the Vineyard and Nantucket – where median home prices are a hair over 2 million). And doesn’t that make good sense?
Elite enclaves are where the EVs would be. Few others can afford them or have the disposable income to embrace their impracticality. Martha’s Vineyard isn’t large so a full charge could last long enough to virtue signal to all the neighbors. Many of its more well-heeled inhabitants are elsewhere during the colder months when EVs lose range, not that these aren’t much more than yard sculptures for many. Parked out front (putting them in the garage is dangerous) to be observed by guests holding half-filled glasses of chardonnay and a small plate of whatever was on the last charcuterie board they passed.
A Mercedes EQE or the BMW i7. Rarer, perhaps, if the ferry has stopped allowing EVs on the boat because of the liability costs (I didn’t look).
And sure, the average denizen of Martha’s Vineyard could easily afford to pay for the charging equipment if they wanted it or pool some resources for public chargers, but why waste the funds appropriated by Congress for chargers if no one in low-income areas can afford an EV aor where EV owners would not be caught dead?
Some animals, or so the saying goes.
