U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg faced tough questions over the weekend regarding President Joe Biden's efforts to encourage Americans to purchase electric vehicles (EVs) and the administration's failure to establish a comprehensive network of charging stations despite billions of dollars in federal investment. The confrontation occurred during a Sunday CBS News interview on "Face The Nation" with host Margaret Brennan.

Brennan played a video clip of former President Donald Trump criticizing Biden's push for electric vehicles, saying, "Do you notice [Biden]'s trying to save the electrical vehicle but not the gas-powered, which is the vehicle that everybody wants. They're going crazy with the electric car, costing us a fortune. We're spending hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing a car that nobody wants and nobody's ever gonna buy." In response, Brennan remarked, "He's not wrong."

Although Buttigieg insisted that Trump's statement was inaccurate, Brennan countered, "On the purchasing, he's not. Of the 4 million vehicles purchased, you know what — 269,000 electric vehicles were sold in the US market. It's up like 2%."

Despite the administration's efforts to promote EVs, American consumers remain largely unconvinced.

Later in the interview, Brennan pressed Buttigieg about the $7.5 billion taxpayer investment made in 2021 to create a charging network for electric vehicles. She pointed out that the project, which falls under Buttigieg's oversight, has only produced seven or eight charging stations in total.

In response, Buttigieg claimed that the charging stations were challenging to construct and that the administration plans to build 500,000 stations in the next six years, despite having built fewer than ten over the past three years.

This ambitious goal, in light of the slow progress thus far, has drawn skepticism from critics who question the feasibility and practicality of the administration's plans.

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