Biden’s EPA Taps the Brakes on Rapid Transition to Electric Cars
“The government and automakers have spent billions on something consumers may not want.”
Late last year, I reported that car dealerships across the nation were begging Biden for help, wanting him him to use his pen and phone to undo the ridiculous EV mandates that have popped up across the nation thanks to green energy pseudoscience and climate cultists.
Someone in the Biden administration appears to be lucid enough to recognize that the appeal of electric vehicles (EVs) is becoming more select….even in the blue bastion of California.
After years of rapid expansion, California’s booming EV market may be showing signs of fatigue as high vehicle prices, unreliable charging networks and other consumer headaches appear to dampen enthusiasm for zero-emission vehicles.
For the first time in more than a decade, electric vehicle sales dropped significantly in the last half of 2023.
…It’s unclear whether the declines are a mere blip or the beginning of a downward trend, but the news is already raising questions about California’s ability to meet its ambitious climate goals, including a pledge to ban the sale of new gasoline- and diesel-powered cars and light trucks by 2035.
“It’s an interesting time for the automakers and consumers,” said Greg Bannon, director of automotive engineering at AAA. “The government and automakers have spent billions on something consumers may not want.”
A significant reason for this trend is that the realities, and expenses, associated with EV ownership are becoming more apparent to a larger number of potential car buyers.
The Truth about EVs. #ClimateScam #GreenEnergy pic.twitter.com/ieMbjN75Z6
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) February 17, 2024
Now, as the presidential primary season is heading toward its Super Tuesday climax, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is poised to slow down on the high-speed transition to electric vehicles. The agency is backing off on tailpipe emissions limits and EV sales targets until after the now rapidly approaching year…2030.
In a concession to automakers and labor unions, the Biden administration intends to relax elements of one of its most ambitious strategies to combat climate change, limits on tailpipe emissions that are designed to get Americans to switch from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles, according to three people familiar with the plan.
Instead of essentially requiring automakers to rapidly ramp up sales of electric vehicles over the next few years, the administration would give car manufacturers more time, with a sharp increase in sales not required until after 2030, these people said. They asked to remain anonymous because the regulation has not been finalized. The administration plans to publish the final rule by early spring.
…Last spring, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed the toughest-ever limits on tailpipe emissions. The rules would be so strict, the only way car makers could comply would be to sell a tremendous number of zero-emissions vehicles in a relatively short time frame.
The E.P.A. designed the proposed regulations so that 67 percent of sales of new cars and light-duty trucks would be all-electric by 2032, up from 7.6 percent in 2023, a radical remaking of the American automobile market.
That remains the goal. But as they finalize the regulations, administration officials are tweaking the plan to slow the pace at which auto manufacturers would need to comply, so that electric vehicle sales would increase more gradually through 2030 but then would have to sharply rise.
Reality and economics are now harshing the climate cultists’ fantasies of a fossil-fuel-free utopia.
The cost of an EV is, on average, $53,000 — still about 4 percent more expensive than your typical car, even though prices have fallen dramatically in the past year. If a driver with stellar credit finances 80 percent of that purchase, as is the typical amount people borrow, that’s more than $11,000 in interest at today’s rates.
This leads back to the automakers themselves. Car manufacturers can cut prices — and they have — but new, expensive factories and higher wages for workers make it harder for them to make a profit. And this is key. All the major EV companies are publicly traded, meaning that management has to answer to shareholders who care about the value of their stock holdings. The fact that consumer demand for battery-electric vehicles is falling means that they will push something else to keep their profits from falling. For Ford and GM, this means selling more cars with combustion engines or, in the case of GM, plug-in hybrids. (GM said it expects to sell at least 200,000 EVs this year, which would roughly triple its sales from last year, a projection that Schirmer calls “optimistic.”)
…. But if the U.S. is going to have a meaningfully electrified fleet, it needs the Big Three to sell these cars, which means making models that both appeal to the masses and earn them a profit — something that they haven’t quite figured out how to do.“The impetus to try to make sure they hit the 2030 targets is going to be overshadowed by the need to make profits,” Jenkins says. “It’s as simple as that.”
How much money and effort have been spent on the effort to force Americans into EVs? This has been a dreadful disaster for our nation and its prosperity. However, all the same chemistry and physics that make EVs impractical with the current power grid and charging network will still be relevant after 2030.
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Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is poised to slow down on the high-speed transition to of electric vehicles.
Which, itself, is completely illegal and so far beyond the purview of any arm of the federal government that it boggles the mind.
I guess we should consider ourselves lucky. THey could have decided that only Segways and tricycles would be road legal transportation … After all, Segways were the greatest thing since sliced bread and were going to completely revolutionize the world. They could have just banned cars, instituted the Segway tax (per Benedict Roberts) for everyone to pay for theirs (and to pay for Segways that would have to be given to welfare recipients and illegals) and delivered everyone’s Segway to them at their front door for them to get around on, from then on … minus the extra licensing, registration, and delivery fees, courtesy of “Your Overlords in Washington”.
For dictators, there is no whim too outrageous or onerous or retarded to force on the population.
If everything is going to be electric… START WITH THE BORDER FENCE!!!!!!!
Dems da breaks, but you may want to use the expression “tap the brakes” instead.
Yes, please fix. It’s bad enough on YouTube, Facebook, etc. BRAKES are applied to stop a vehicle.
Fixed, thanks!
Aren’t we supposed to follow the “science”? Apparently, the EPA is too dumb to figure out that EVs are scientifically implausible. The amount of earth that has to be moved to make one EV us astounding. When one accounts for the CO2 that has to be expended to move that earth, and the ancillary CO2 to make an EV vehicle, it becomes very murky as to whether or not an EV reduces CO2 compared to an ICE vehicle. Of course, the moronic EPA has not really taken into account the amount of extra electricity that has to be produced to fuel EVs, or the amount of wiring that must be installed to handle EVs. Of course, command economies never get it right, and that’s what we’re seeing play out in America. Somehow, Leftists (i.e. DemoncRats) never learn that socialism does not work because individuals cannot know what the market knows.
You do realise there are lots of studies on this, the EPA have done the lifecycle impacts of both gas vs electric and even considering your concerns are better. You seem to imagine that no one has thought of this issue, they have.
“lots of studies on this, the EPA have done…”
“Listen to that,” said the man in a red cloak, “one animal says another animal told it to do something.”
–CORDWAINER SMITH, “NORSTRILIA”
“The government and automakers have spent billions on something consumers may not want.”
Gee, ya think? That’s billions that could have been spent making ICE and hybrids either better or less costly, and more billions of tax dollars subsidizing the rich to buy fancy around-town cars. Political decisions in lieu of free market decisions always result in a misallocation of resources. And it’s even likely that our domestic automakers will be driven back to DC with their hands out for taxpayer-funded bailouts because of this.
The better summation of this is: “The government forced the automakers to spend billions ….”
Without the government subsidies and the EPA forcing production, the EV would be less popular than scale model live-steam locomotives on personal garden railroads.
My Ram2500 holds 30 gal of diesel that will take me 500 miles; I can refill the tank before I have time to clean the windshield. It seats 4 (5 if one is skinny) and it easily handles a ton of hay. Show me an EV that can do all that. Oh, and its 20 years old, cost $32K new.
Furthermore, the automakers didn’t spend a dime. Do any of us understand that the cost associated with the manufacture of anything is passed into the consumer?
So, “The government and automakers have spent billions on something consumers may not want.” Those billions have been spread out over the cost of every single product the auto manufacturers and the supply chain preceding that manufacture.
“May”?!
If consumers want something they don’t have to be paid to take it off the dealers’ hands. The existence of such payments is proof that they don’t want it.
In it’s hey day the Soviet Union was the largest producer of shoes in the world. They were turning out 800 million pairs of shoes a year. Production amounted to more than three pairs of shoes per year for every man, woman and child in the Soviet Union.
But everywhere people were waiting in line to buy shoes. Why? Because the comfort, fit, design, and size mix of Soviet shoes were so out of sync with what people wanted that they refused to buy them. Instead they were willing to stand in line for hours to buy imported shoes that were in limited supply.
What a waste. The role of government in this is to direct and oversee the national labs to do the basic research necessary to make the battery technology of tomorrow possible. And the other item is to do the same for Gen IV nuclear. If they actually get that done l, great things are possible. But mandating automates to do the first, and doing basically nothing on the other is a recipe for pure political bullshi….oh.
Sorry:
What a waste. The role of government in this is to direct and oversee the national labs to do the basic research necessary to make the battery technology of tomorrow possible. And the other item is to do the same for Gen IV nuclear. If they actually get that done, great things are possible. But mandating automobile companies to do the first, and doing basically nothing on the other is a recipe for pure political bullshi….oh.
Show me “national labs” and “basic research” delegated powers in the Constitution.
“What more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens–a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, bshall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement,/b and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”
–Thomas Jefferson: First Inaugural, 1801.
Our forefathers were much brighter and intelligent than the morons who sit in those elite offices in Washington.
To think, we have people like Pete BootyEdge and Jennifer Granholm trying to foist their idiocy on the nation.
The reason “the Market” works best is that the people most affected by change are intimately connected to the decisions, and in many ways pay from their very pockets for that change. If the change is profitable, then others will provide the capital to see it through.
When some government bureaucrat or political appointee who has no knowledge of the industry is put in charge, we get electric vehicles without the concomitant charging stations and infrastructure needed to operate efficiently.
It is very common these days to get over 200k miles on an ICE vehicle these days, a well maintained vehicle can last many people 20 years easily. I would never want to be in a position where I was forced to buy electric, I would rather have the option of buying used or even vintage and have it restored.
330,000+ on my 2007 Chevy Cobalt, bought used three years ago for $2,500. Not counting routine maintenance, I’ve put maybe $500 into repairs.
“Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is poised to slow down on the high-speed transition to of electric vehicles.”
Ya think?
The Biden administration has had this particular pole rammed so far up its *** by the car-buying public that the only way for them to save face was to smile and pretend that imitating a lollipop was their idea all along.
Let’s make it clear to them that we’re not going to settle for a lollipop impression — we’re pushing for the whole flagpole eagle improv.
A common misconception is that EVs are a stand-alone transportation but they aren’t. Their battery is only a storage unit, not an engine or power source. An ICE vehicle can run for miles on a small can of gasoline weighing about 6 pounds and if a full tank is used say 20 gallons, it can go more than 350 miles. It can also be refueled at any point in its trip. The same EV is compelled to follow the recharging stations map and hope they are in service. You see many twenty-year-old cars and trucks on the streets and yet you will NEVER see a twenty-year-old EV except at the junkyard. It is a dream of the eco-dumb who thinks they are saving the planet but they are actually killing it.
As well as killing the child slave labor to mine the rare earth materials.
Since when do they care what consumers want? That’s why they wanted to ban the sale of new ICE vehicles. There’s no need to ban the alternative for something people actually want. Does anyone remember when it was that the Feds banned the sale of new horses?
The way I understand what the government is telling us is that they wish to diminish the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere.
I do not believe that CO2 is ‘warming’ the planet, but to address their point…
As it stands, the vast majority of electric energy is generated by fossil fuels. There is a great deal of energy loss during the transmission of electricity from the power plant to the point of use.
Battery powered vehicles are about twice as heavy as ICE vehicles, and thus require twice the amount of energy to push the vehicle 1 mile down the road.
It is therefore necessary to burn 3-4x times the required fossil fuels to use an EV than an ICE vehicle.
If the point is to reduce the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere, the electrical grid must be powered by nuclear power plants. It takes about 10 years to build a nuclear power plant after the regulatory hurdles are overcome.
The government has put the cart before the horse. If they truly wanted an all-electric vehicle society, they would relax the regulations on the construction of nuclear power plants and wait 20 years until we have an 80% nuclear electric grid, but they will not do that.
The economists call this ‘revealed preference’, that is, look at what they do rather than what they say.
Erronius
While I agree with your comments, let’s all agree that there is no such thing as fossil fuels. While oil and coal are from decomposed plants and and animals, the use of “fossil” causes people to believe that fuel comes from dinosaurs.
Yeah, I know. It’s technically correct, but we have people in the US who are educated in public schools.
Good points, but the central tyranny has no business forecasting and enabling any “future technologies.” These masterminds have proven their inability to defend life, liberty, and property today—constantly doing the opposite. It’s time for the vast majority of them to be driven from office.
IMO much of the EV hype is from a distorted view of the USA. Consider all the media pieces written post 2016 election. We had Acela corridor (Boston, NYC, Philly, Baltimore, New Haven, Wilmington and points in between) media leaving their cloistered east coast blue enclaves venturing out to ‘fly over country/Jesus land’ where the ‘deplorables’ reside clinging to their religion, guns and F150. They wrote those pieces as if they were a 18th century travelogue on a journey to some remote foreign continent. They did so b/c, IMO, it was foreign to their previous experiences. They were in a word clueless.
These media folks, their friends, family, acquaintances and the politicians they admire are exactly the folks described as ‘rich men North of Richmond’. They have very little perspective about the rest of the Nation outside their blue enclaves b/c despite their arrogance they are very provincial. Sure they may go from NYC to vacation in Napa Valley CA, to ski in Aspen CO or go to Paris FR or London England but they merely swap one set of urban blue enclave dwellers surrounding them for another.
The key is that these folks don’t have any connection to the rest of the USA. They and the credentialed class that staffs the Federal bureaucracy seem to view the rest of the Nation, particularly rural America, as a wasteland populated by the CST of extras from Deliverance. In their view the rest of us are too dimwitted to understand what’s ‘good for us’ so they view it as their obligation to tell us what and how to live our lives.
Six years ago, movie theater near where I work made a big deal about installing EV charging stations – press releases, ribbon cutting, etc.
Last year, they very quietly removed those chargers.
Tells me everything I need to know.
Did they remove the diesel generator from the back of the building they used to power the charging stations?
😏
It’s actually a giant treadmill with enslaved 3rd-world children that powers the EV industry.
Biden green new deal is trillion dollar fraud. The only benefits are for those who got in on the ground floor of stock in EV companies, and pumped and dumped the stock.
I’m am just sorry I didn’t get in on the EV Metro Bus scam before it died out. That boondoggle was so short lived that only the manufacturers made out.
dont be fooled
againnn
the lefty is also at the same time limiting gas station building etc etc
the msm coupled with the “glee” the gop gets from a moment of seeming victory allows their lies to proliferate
nothing is stopping the lefty agenda
the goal with green is to shift the power balance
from whitey to poc
Taps the brakes. We’ll, where does the central tyranny think it gets the power to dictate what cars Americans must buy?
wonder how warrent buffett and the biden connections to him are making out in these ev deals???
( all started during the obama biden takeover)
All the green virtue signalling early adopters bought them and now none are selling because for the vast majority of us they don’t work. Pass all the regulations you want but if the manu’s go bankrupt how is that supposed to work?
Progressive Communist’s in our government thinkn
Think they can force us to do what they want us to do but herding cats outside the beltway is rather hard
Just like billions have been spent on clothes and dish washers nobody wanted, and billions more will be forced to be spent on other “energy efficient” boondoggles.
They spelled “doesn’t quite work yet” wrong.