Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced this past Friday that the state will be getting 74 new DC fast chargers for electric vehicles, he was addressing a press conference held for the same reason.
This EV charging infrastructure expansion will require an $8.5 million investment that is just a small part of the $166 million settlement that the state of Florida was awarded as a result of Volkswagen’s violation of the Clean Air Act.
Although not officially announced by the Governor, Tesla will be the main beneficiary of this deal as most of the infrastructure will consist of Tesla Superchargers stations spanning across 1200 miles on state’s evacuation routes and major highways I-75, I-4, and I-95 — an increase in the presence of publicly available charging stations by approximately 15%.
As the press conference preparations were in full swing for the announcement, several at least 5 Tesla cars appeared at the location and were parked a the Supercharger stalls, reported on Twitter by Asher Wildman:
Later on, it was confirmed by News 6 Orlando that Tesla officials also joined the press conference and the Tesla Superchargers will be getting the major share in this EV charging infrastructure expansion, a few excerpts from Governor DeSantis’ press conference (full video below) :
We are now ready to award over 8.5 million dollars in contracts to build 74 additional fast electric charging stations.
We expect the stations to be built within a matter of weeks.
Electric Vehicle purchase in Florida has increased 10 fold in the last 9 years and we expect that trend to continue.
In terms of the Volkswagen settlement limit, the amount of funds that we can use on the EV infrastructure to 15% of the total $166 million, so we can use about $25 million, that means that this initial $8.5 million investment is one chunk but we do have more money that we can use for EV infrastructure and we’re really looking to do that.
Just like Volkswagen is helping Tesla and the electric vehicles to move in the right direction wit their wrongdoings in the United States, Fiat Chrysler (FCA) is buying CO2 emissions credits worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year from Tesla in Europe to comply with the environmental standards in the region, if this situation continues, it is pretty clear who is the winner.
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