The Patriot Post® · The Eleventh-Hour EV Mandate

The Biden/Harris administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just green-lighted California’s EV mandate, which seeks to phase out gas-powered cars over the next decade. The mandate states that 35% of all cars whose model year is 2026 must be electric. That percentage will only increase year over year until 2035, when all California cars sold must be electric.

This is both a bad idea and an unrealistic one. California can’t even keep up with its current electrical needs, particularly during the summer season, when there are rolling brownouts.

What will this EV mandate achieve? Well, it’ll probably tank California’s auto market. Many people don’t really want to drive electric vehicles. They’re expensive, require charging infrastructure (which isn’t widely available yet), take a while to recharge, and are limited in their range. However, many California car dealerships will likely only sell EVs to help meet the mandate’s demands. Sensible Californians will probably do what people in many states with explosion bans do to procure July 4th fireworks: hop over the state line to buy the gas car that they actually want.

Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, echoed this sentiment in a statement. “It is no surprise,” he said, “that President Biden waited until the eleventh hour of his presidency to run roughshod over the wishes of the American people by granting California permission to ban gas-powered cars and light trucks. Americans should be free to choose the types of cars and trucks that best suit their needs, not ones that bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., and Sacramento dictate to them.”

Eleven other states that follow California’s lead on emissions regulations will also receive a waiver from the EPA. Those states are Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is very pleased with this development. He pontificated, “Clean cars are here to stay. The Biden-Harris Administration reaffirmed what we’ve known for decades — California can rise to the challenge of protecting our people by cleaning our air and cutting pollution.”

However, this stunt may just be spitting in the wind. With President-elect Donald Trump taking office in January, this mandate will be quashed. There is also the question of whether or not this ban is legal in the first place. The mandate will be litigated in the courts between the environmentalists and those with common sense. One can only hope for the non-ecofascist people in those 12 states that the ban is struck down.

As for Newsom, people are fleeing his state in droves. The cost of living in California is excruciatingly high, and now he wants to make existing problems with the electrical board worse by adding to the draw. He has actively made the Golden State a much more tarnished place to live, and this despotic mandate is a perfect example.