The Patriot Post® · Biden Hits the Gas Pedal on EV Mandate
To the millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet under sustained high inflation, Joe Biden has effectively said, “Well, make them buy EVs.” While Biden cannot directly issue an EV mandate to American consumers, he can make it as cost-prohibitive as possible to afford a gas-powered vehicle.
Enter the Environmental Protection Agency, which yesterday unveiled its long-warned update of tail-pipe emissions regulations. The new severely restrictive regulations are intended to ensure that 70% of all new car sales are electric vehicles by 2032.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board explains how it will work: “Most popular gas-powered pickups emit about 430 grams of CO2 per mile. Under EPA’s final rule, trucks will have to average 184 g/mile in 2027, 128 g/mile in 2030 and 90 g/mile by 2032. Ergo, the companies will effectively have to produce one to two electric trucks for every gas-powered one in 2027. The ratio will be closer to four to one by 2032.” Talk about doing things by the back door.
Remember all the way back to five days ago when the Leftmedia went into hysterics over Donald Trump’s “bloodbath” comment? He was talking about the auto market under Biden.
The Biden administration Soviet State Planning Committee makes this draconian decision in the face of an auto industry that is pulling back on EV production numbers as sales numbers have leveled off and demand is drying up. With just 9% of all new car sales last year being EVs, the vast majority of Americans have decided that EVs don’t work for them. This is why the auto industry is scaling back on EVs. This is also why Hertz is now trying to sell off its fleet of EVs after having learned the hard way that customers want the security, familiarity, and range that gas-powered vehicles give them.
Given these developments, the Biden administration has engaged in a game of doublespeak, as it has pushed back the initial target date for overall EV sales by three years. However, it is merely a short-term reprieve as the new rules come into play hard and fast. Furthermore, these new rules are meant to hinder a potential Trump administration from easily reversing them.
Committing the country to bow to the climate cult rather than what is in the best interest of the American public is the apparent motivation behind these nonsensical rules.
And nonsensical they are. There is no charging infrastructure in place that can remotely meet the needs of tens of millions of EVs. The $7.5 billion provided by Congress over two years ago to construct a nationwide charging station network had produced not a single station as of December, though Biden has boasted about it anyway in successive State of the Union addresses.
Of course, the question of what energy sources will provide the high volume of electricity these stations will need is also a problem. Even as renewable energy grows, the volume of energy produced has not. And the overall energy demand for powering tens of millions of EVs will increase exponentially. That can’t be met with renewables. Will the Biden administration go nuclear? Nope. Team Biden has shied away from that as well.
Given the lack of logical rationale for this confounding EV push, what might the actual goal be? To make it harder for Americans to move about?
The truth is that today’s EVs only work for the upper-middle and upper classes. They’re too costly and inconvenient for the rest of the country. Furthermore, the notion that EVs will curb emissions and reduce climate change is deeply flawed.
Responding to the EPA’s new rule, the CEOs and presidents of American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute, Chet Thompson and Mike Sommers, respectively, called on Congress to step in. “At a time when millions of Americans are struggling with high costs and inflation, the Biden administration has finalized a regulation that will unequivocally eliminate most new gas cars and traditional hybrids from the U.S. market in less than a decade,” they said. “As much as the President and EPA claim to have ‘eased’ their approach, nothing could be further from the truth.” They then explained: “This regulation will make new gas-powered vehicles unavailable or prohibitively expensive for most Americans. For them, this wildly unpopular policy is going to feel and function like a ban.”
They are not wrong. Biden’s EPA is blatantly picking economic winners and losers. Rather than trusting the free market and the American consumer, Biden and company are seeking to force their ideological worldview onto the American public, all in the name of “saving the planet.”
Michigan Republican Representative Tim Walberg, who last summer introduced legislation to stop the regulations that failed to pass the Senate, blasted the Biden administration. “Top-down government edicts cannot change the demand of consumers overnight, yet this is exactly the Biden administration’s plan,” he said. “This rule restricts the choices of American consumers and will price millions out of the market, eliminate American jobs, and forever link our auto industry with the Chinese Communist Party.”
If Congress can’t help, Americans may be forced to drive their gas-powered vehicles a whole lot longer. Furthermore, while it may benefit the used car market, auto manufacturers are bound to suffer, and new gas-powered vehicles may soon become wildly unaffordable.