The House Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s electric vehicle road trip this summer, which drew attention after charging hiccups resulted in a family calling the authorities on staff blocking a charging station for the official.
Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and energy policy subcommittee Chairman Pat Fallon (R-TX) asked the agency Tuesday for documents related to Granholm’s journey through North Carolina to Tennessee to “understand the purposes, costs, and consequences” of the road trip. Their letter focuses the inquiry on an NPR report that documented the mishaps of the drive. The demand is the latest instance of Republicans attacking the Biden administration’s push for electric vehicles.
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“This taxpayer-funded publicity stunt illustrates yet again how out of touch the Biden Administration is with the consequences of policies it has unleashed on everyday Americans,” the letter reads. “Committee Republicans remain committed to preserving freedoms like vehicle consumer choice in the face of an unproven, burdensome, and expensive Biden Administration push to force all Americans to buy EVs.”
Granholm’s trip was intended to draw attention to the billions that the Biden administration has poured into EVs and related infrastructure, but that message was soon overlooked when Granholm’s own staff had to grapple with the limitations of driving electric vehicles. While trying to fast-charge a caravan of EVs in Georgia, her team realized there weren’t enough plugs to go around, so a staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle by a charger to reserve the spot for the energy secretary.
As a result, a family with an infant was blocked off from accessing the charger and soon called the police on the staff.
Granholm’s trip underlined the obstacles that many EV owners face while driving long distances: the inconvenient wait that comes with juicing up the vehicle, the difficulty of planning ahead to find a charger before batteries run dry, and the challenge of finding chargers that are compatible or even work.
These hurdles make up the foundation of the GOP’s criticisms of electric vehicles, along with calling attention to the higher sticker prices of EVs than traditional internal combustion engines. Democrats aimed to address these concerns with billions of dollars in investment through their party-line climate bill and a bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Still, House Republicans aren’t the only ones that are highlighting the mishaps of the trip. During a Senate GOP weekly press conference earlier this month, leadership poked fun at the snags the energy secretary faced while driving her EV.
“You can’t make this stuff up. … If the Biden administration can’t make it from Charlotte to Memphis without an incident, then how do we expect that all of our nontactical military fleet is going to get transitioned by the year 2030 without having big issues?” said Republican Policy Committee Chairwoman Joni Ernst (R-IA).
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The Oversight letter also makes an effort to highlight that the car that was used to block off the charging station was a traditional internal combustion engine, arguing that Granholm’s trip could not be completed “without the support of the fossil fuel industry which you and the Biden Administration have been intent to vilify and destroy.”
Oversight is asking for Granholm to produce several documents to the committee related to the trip, including ones that detail the cost to taxpayers and a list of all the cars that were driven, before Oct. 10. The letter is also calling for a staff-level briefing before Oct. 3.
