Officials say rule aimed at expanding electric vehicles
The Biden administration on Wednesday issued one of the most significant climate regulations in the nation's history, a rule designed to ensure that the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032.
Nearly three years in the making, the new tailpipe pollution limits from the Environmental Protection Agency would transform the U.S. automobile market. A record 1.2 million electric vehicles rolled off dealers' lots last year, but they made up just 7.6% of total U.S. car sales, far from the 56% target under the new regulation. An additional 16% of new cars sold would be hybrids.
Cars and other forms of transportation are, together, the largest single source of carbon emissions generated by the United States, pollution that is driving climate change and that helped to make 2023 the hottest year in recorded history. Electric vehicles are central to President Joe Biden's strategy to confront global warming, which calls for cutting the nation's emissions in half by the end of this decade. But EVs have also become politicized and are a flashpoint in the 2024 presidential campaign.
“Three years ago, I set an ambitious target: that half of all new cars and trucks sold in 2030 would be zero-emission,” said Biden in a statement. “Together, we've made historic progress. Hundreds of new expanded factories across the country. Hundreds of billions in private investment and thousands of good-paying union jobs.
And we'll meet my goal for 2030 and race forward in the years ahead.”
The rule increasingly limits the amount of pollution allowed from tailpipes over time so that, by 2032, more than half the new cars sold in the United States would most likely be zero-emissions vehicles in order for carmakers to meet the standards.
That would avoid more than 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions over the next 30 years, according to the EPA. That's the equivalent of removing a year's worth of all the greenhouse gases generated by the United States, the country that has historically pumped the most carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The regulation would provide nearly $100 billion in annual net benefits to society, according to the agency, including $13 billion of annual public health benefits thanks to improved air quality.
The standards would also save the average American driver about $6,000 in reduced fuel and maintenance over the life of a vehicle, the EPA estimated.
The transition to electric vehicles would require enormous changes in manufacturing, infrastructure, technology, labor, global trade and consumer habits.
And it has become politically fraught. Former President Donald Trump, who is campaigning to retake the White House from Biden in November, has sought to weaponize electric vehicles, repeating false claims during campaign rallies about their performance and affordability and using increasingly heated rhetoric.
The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a lobbying organization, has started what it says is a “seven figure” campaign of advertising, phone calls and text messages against what it falsely calls “Biden's EPA car ban” in the swing states Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, as well as in Ohio, Montana and the Washington, D.C., market.
The EPA regulation is not a ban. It does not mandate the sales of electric vehicles, and gas-powered cars and trucks could still be sold. Rather, it requires carmakers to meet tough new average emissions limits across their entire product line. It's up to the manufacturers to decide how to comply.