Cost of Driving an EV
Can you imagine the pressure to "Privatize" those utilities?
For the most part they exist because the private sector wasn't interested in the meager amount of business they would have realized during the push for electrification nearly a century ago. Most of the public operations are still small utilities run in small towns. Due to the low rates enjoyed by the residents, they aren't likely to give them up. Maybe for a monorail.
I know of an interesting story from those times. My family has land in New York that was payment to an ancestor for his service in the Revolution. It's in a valley cut out by glaciers long ago. My Mom still lives there, as does my brother and his family. Bordering that land is a State Forest. It's beautiful spot, great for hunting, with some pretty steep hills. When the rural electrification push was going through, the private utility doing the work didn't want to incur the expense and effort to run power lines to the farms that had been on those hills for almost 150 years. Some politicians got paid off, and through eminent domain they made it a State Forest, and threw the people off the land. A few came back, and picked up where they left off, living the only life they'd known. The state got wind of it, evicted them again, burned all the buildings, and killed what livestock the residents had managed to keep. That took care of that. All that's left now are a few foundations, small family cemeteries, and stone fence lines all overgrown with forest.
