EC Georgia News

A majority of American voters disagree with the idea that the best solution to high gas prices is urging all Americans to buy electric vehicles (EVs), according to a recent national poll by the Senate Opportunity Fund (SOF).

When asked, 55% of respondents disagreed with the idea of encouraging more EVs to solve gas prices, while 38% agreed and 8% had no opinion. The poll, conducted March 15-17, surveyed 800 general election-likely voters on a national scale.

This comes as gasoline is a leading driver of consumer inflation. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), gas price inflation is up 38% from a year ago.

With the energy price crisis remaining at a high, The Hill reports progressives have taken the opportunity to push for the shift to more EVs. President Joe Biden signed an executive order in August of last year setting up goals that half of all new vehicles sold by 2030 would be zero-emissions vehicles and that 500,000 electric vehicle charges would be deployed in the same time frame.

With this, $160 million has been allocated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to build EV charging stations in Georgia during the next five years, primarily along interstate highways, GPB reports.

“Georgia is leading the way in EV manufacturing, and Sen. Reverend Warnock and I are accelerating the completion of a statewide EV charging network,” Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) said in a February press release.

Moving forward, the U.S. Department of Transportation is dispersing nearly $20 million in federal investments for Fiscal Year 2022 in an effort to build out Georgia’s EV infrastructure network across the state.

On March 29, the White House said EV manufacturer VinFast would build an EV and battery manufacturing facility in North Carolina. The $4 billion establishment is set to create more than 7,000 jobs and hundreds of thousands of EVs and batteries, the release states. 

Among comments, Biden said this is just the latest example of his economic strategy at work.