Inside the criticism of electric vehicles
The electric vehicle, a breakthrough achievement in automotive technology, has driven into this year’s presidential election, inflaming partisan fights that have come to define much of American culture.
One reason is that President Joe Biden has made electric vehicles central to his strategy to combat climate change. Last week, his administration announced the most ambitious climate regulation in the nation’s history: a measure designed to accelerate a transition toward electric vehicles and away from the gasoline-powered cars that are a major cause of global warming.
The political war over electric vehicles has been fueled by an incendiary mix of issues: technological change, the future of the oil and gas industry, concerns about competition from China and the American love of motorized muscle. And in the rural reaches of America, where few public charging stations exist, the notion of an all-electric future feels fanciful — another element to the urbanrural divide that underlies the nation’s polarization.
Biden’s opponent, former President Donald Trump, has for months escalated attacks on electric vehicles broadly and the new regulation in particular, falsely calling the rule a ban on gasoline-powered cars and claiming electric cars will “kill” America’s auto industry. He has called them an “assassination” of jobs. He has declared that the Biden administration “ordered a hit job on Michigan manufacturing” by encouraging the sales of electric cars.
Within minutes of the announcement of the new rule, similar talking points — albeit not as violent — flooded the Republican ecosystem.
“The Biden administration is deciding for Americans which kind of cars they are allowed to buy, rent and drive,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment Committee, in remarks that were echoed across the Capitol and on Fox News. A Fox News headline falsely claimed “Biden mandates production of electric vehicles.”
In many ways, Biden’s new rules on auto pollution combine elements that conservatives love to hate: government regulations and the notion that Democrats want to force Americans to give up comforts in the name of the environment.
Over the years, Trump has sharpened Republican opposition to environmental rules by attacking everything from non-aerosol hair spray to low-flow toilets. He has bashed energy-efficient dishwashers and LED light bulbs, and he falsely claimed that wind turbines cause cancer.
In pitching his EV policies to Americans, Biden has sought to present himself as a “car guy,” talking about his upbringing as the son of a car dealer and test driving a Ford F-150 electric pickup truck to pronounce “This sucker’s quick!” He was the first president to join autoworkers on the picket line.
Still, policy analysts say Trump’s attacks on the government’s efforts to clean up cars are likely to resonate with voters.
“When you get into personal vehicles, you’re touching a huge portion of the United States,” said Barry
Rabe, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan.
Especially potent is the false claim that the new rule is a “ban” on conventional cars, analysts said.
The EPA regulation is not a ban. Rather, it requires carmakers to meet tough new average emissions limits across their entire product line, starting in model year 2027 and ramping up through 2032.
Automakers could comply with the emissions caps by selling a mix of gasolineburning cars, hybrids, EVS or other types of vehicles, such as cars powered by hydrogen.
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.
The new limits on tailpipe emissions 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 historically has pumped the most carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The country’s major car companies grudgingly have accepted the new regulations, after winning some concessions from the administration, in the form of a more gradual compliance schedule that pushes back the most stringent requirements until after 2030.
“The future is electric,” said John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents 42 car companies that produce nearly all the new vehicles sold in the United States. He said the rules “are mindful of the importance of choice to drivers and preserve their ability to choose the vehicle that’s right for them.”
But other industries that will be affected by the rule have launched attacks — particularly oil and gas companies that see the rise of electric vehicles as an existential threat.
The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a lobbying organization, has begun what it says is a “seven figure” campaign of advertising, phone calls and text messages against what it calls “Biden’s EPA car ban” in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, as well as in Ohio, Montana and the Washington, D.C., market.
Also fighting the rule are more than 4,000 of the country’s 18,000 car dealerships, which wrote to Biden urging him to “tap the brakes” on the rule. Auto dealers — business owners rooted in communities who directly interact with motorists as they choose what to drive — could be particularly persuasive to voters, analysts said.
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