American Automakers Back Away from Biden-Harris EV Goals

American Automakers Back Away from Biden-Harris EV Goals

As Vice President Kamala Harris is poised to become the 2024 Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, it is important to note that she is tied to the Biden-⁠Harris Electric Vehicle Charging Action Plan of 2021.

The ambitious goal of that plan is to make half of all new vehicles electric by 2030. However, American consumers are slamming the brakes on purchasing electric vehicles (EVs), and the market seems to be running out of fuel.

Part of the reason for the rejection is that the infrastructure and technology are just not where they need to be to support the operation and maintenance of so many EVs, because those green energy dreams are running into real world issues.

The complementary infrastructure for EVs is much less developed than the infrastructure for gas vehicles, which was built for over a century. As a result, many people are less willing to purchase EVs, concerned about the limited number of charging stations nationwide.

To address this problem, the Biden-Harris Administration announced a $7.5 billion investment in EV infrastructure, including the construction of 500,000 chargers by 2030. Yet, as of May 2024, only 8 federal charging stations had been built out of a national total of 65,000 charging stations.

In contrast, there are almost 200,000 gas stations in the U.S. The slow rollout of the Biden-Harris initiative, combined with Donald Trump’s opposition to what he terms “the green new scam”, may further discourage potential EV buyers and cast doubt on the government’s ability or willingness to follow through on its EV promises.

In addition to the relatively low total number of EV charging stations, there is a vast regional disparity. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, EV charging locations are clustered on the East and West coasts and in bigger cities, leaving the vast rural areas underserved and making EVs less viable for people living outside of major urban areas.

Making national plans on niche market desires is senseless. Corporations that answer to shareholders and automakers who want to make profits are beginning to adjust their market plans based on cold, hard facts.

General Motors is now slowing its plans for all-electric vehicles by delaying a second U.S. electric truck plant and the Buick brand’s first EV.

The six-month delay in retooling the electric truck plant in Michigan, until mid-2026, also means GM will not achieve a prior target of having North American production capacity of 1 million EVs by 2025.

We are committed to growing responsibly and profitably,” GM CEO Mary Barra told investors Tuesday during the company’s second-quarter earnings call.

Barra’s comments come a week after she raised concerns about GM hitting its North American EV production capacity target.

Barra did not provide updated timing on Buick’s first EV, which was expected in 2024. The entire Buick brand has targeted being fully electric by 2030, as part of GM’s plans to exclusively offer consumer EVs by 2035.

Meanwhile, Ford Motor is expanding production of its large Super Duty trucks to a Canadian plant that was previously set to be converted into an EV hub. I sense the motive is related to profits, which seem to come from the large trucks.

“Super Duty is a vital tool for businesses and people around the world and, even with our Kentucky Truck Plant and Ohio Assembly Plant running flat out, we can’t meet the demand,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a release. “This move benefits our customers and supercharges our Ford Pro commercial business.”

As a reminder, Ford reports it is taking a massive loss for each EV it sells.

But it isn’t only this country that is seeing the decline in interest for EV ownership. The fuel is beginning to run out in the green utopia that is Europe.

Fiat will reintroduce a petrol-engined 500 city car in the next two years due to a lack of demand for electric vehicles, particularly among older drivers, its CEO has said.

Olivier Francois confirmed the new petrol 500 Ibrida will arrive in early 2026 due to a slower than anticipated uptake of EVs across Europe, according to Autocar.

However, he confirmed it will be the final version of the retro small car to have an internal combustion engine with the EU set to outlaw new petrol and diesel vehicle sales from 2035.

One last note about Harris and the focus on EV’s that has been the hallmark of the administration. In her time as Attorney General of California, she targeted the fossil fuel industry.

Before her tenure as the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris previously served as a U.S. Senator representing California and was also the state’s attorney general. She took a staunch stance against fossil fuels and other drivers of climate change in both positions.

During her time as California AG from 2011 to 2017, Harris’ office investigated oil giant Exxon Mobil (XOM) over its handling of knowledge about fossil fuels’ impact on climate change and whether its public statements broke securities laws and other environmental protections.

As a reminder, an important scientific paper from Norwegian statisticians who looked at a massive amount of historical data came to a conclusion that indicates the carbon dioxide (CO2) can’t be clearly connected to any global temperature change:

[T]he results imply that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be sufficiently strong to cause systematic changes in the pattern of the temperature fluctuations. In other words, our analysis indicates that with the current level of knowledge, it seems impossible to determine how much of the temperature increase is due to emissions of CO2.

Forcing environmental morality on decisions that should be based on science, technology, and real market forces has been the hallmark of the Biden-Harris team from day one. I am looking forward to how our “press” scrubs all this failure.

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