Biden’s Killer Electric-Car Mandate

In a blatant game of good-cop, bad-cop, President Biden last week rolled out new auto-emissions mandates that aren’t as brutal as his Environmental Protection Agency proposed last year, but still guarantee huge pain for automakers and consumers.

The rules impose carbon-emissions averages for the total cars and trucks sold, which works out to ordering that two-thirds of all new vehicles be electric or hybrid by 2032, with lesser quotas along the way.

Yet EVs already pile up on dealers’ lots, while Ford, GM and the rest cut prices and lose money on every sale, turning profits only by hiking prices on gas-powered vehicles — all to meet mild mandates from DC.

EVs made up just over 7% of all car sales last year; hybrids, another 9%. Biden’s “good-cop” rule would have them combine for 36% by 2027, just three years away.

Cross-subsidies to meet the goals will push normal-car prices into the stratosphere — and likely still not get consumers to play along. Instead, Americans will keep older cars on the road; paying through the nose for clunkers and repairs will be the better bet.

And most US electricity will still come from carbon fuels, which generate 80%+ of power now, so this won’t even bring major greenhouse-gas reductions — unless the plan is to leave us all shivering in the dark with no cars we can drive.

Has Biden asked his economists to take an honest look at how all this will goose inflation?

This is what he’s doing when he’s still desperate to eek out enough votes to win in November; if he pulls that off, and no longer has to care about what disasters his policies bring, his second term will mean even more misery for average Americans than his first.