The Biden administration is boasting progress in acquiring zero-emissions vehicles for the federal fleet, but it is still a long way off from reaching the president’s goal to electrify every federal vehicle.
This year, the federal government is on track to triple its procurement of zero-emissions vehicles, the White House announced during Joe Biden’s climate summit last month. Putting the federal government’s progress thus far in context, however, shows it will likely take many years to reach Biden’s goal.
“These things take time. They don’t happen overnight,” said Dorothy Robyn, a senior fellow at the Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy who worked at the General Services Administration and the Defense Department during the Obama administration.
“My view is the important thing here is signaling to the market that you’re serious about doing this, and you can accomplish that very quickly,” she added.
So far this fiscal year, the Biden administration has ordered more than twice as many zero-emissions vehicles for the federal government as last fiscal year, according to data provided by the GSA, which manages much of the roughly 645,000-vehicle federal fleet.
As of early May, the federal government has ordered 474 zero-emissions vehicles during this fiscal year. The majority of those, 397 vehicles, were ordered since Biden’s inauguration, a GSA spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
Nonetheless, even with those procurements, less than 1% of the entire federal fleet is electric, and that includes plug-in hybrid vehicles, according to the Washington Examiner’s review of GSA data.
Electric vehicle advocates see a significant opportunity for Biden to put the pieces in place to drive zero-emissions vehicle procurement more quickly. The effort would see a boost from Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, which pledges to invest $174 billion to bolster the electric vehicle market through consumer incentives and infrastructure support.
Near-term challenges
But advocates also acknowledge some challenges in the near term: higher upfront cost of many electric models, a lack of electric options in certain vehicle categories, and a need to build out infrastructure to support electric procurement.
Currently, the sticker price of many electric models is still more than their gas-powered counterparts. That could prove to be a problem because the GSA requires federal agencies leasing vehicles from it to pay the cost difference between an electric vehicle and the lowest comparable gas-powered car, Robyn said.
“It’s a significant enough figure that it serves as a deterrent,” she added, calling the higher upfront cost a “green premium.” Robyn has proposed the GSA absorb that incremental cost difference, instead of forcing agencies to pay it.
Electric vehicle advocates note that overall, even now, switching the federal fleet to electric would save the government an enormous amount of money in fuel savings and operating costs.
Nick Nigro, founder of Atlas Public Policy, said federal agencies should shift their operations to look at the cost of acquiring electric vehicles “in the aggregate” so they can balance the higher upfront sticker price with the overall savings from operating an electric fleet.
That would result “in the ability of these agencies to electrify far more vehicles than they would if they only looked at the vehicles on an individual basis,” Nigro said.
Federal agencies may also be overestimating the cost of switching to electric vehicles in their current calculation, said Joe Britton, executive director of the Zero Emissions Transportation Association.
The United States Postal Service, which operates its own fleet separate from the GSA of more than 200,000 vehicles, has said it can only afford electric models for 10% of the next-generation delivery vehicles it has contracted Oshkosh Defense to build in the next decade.
Britton said, however, that the Postal Service didn’t properly analyze the potential savings of electric models over the lifetime of its delivery vehicles, looking only over 15 years instead of the typical 30-year lifetime of a delivery vehicle. The Postal Service is also “highly exaggerating” the cost of charging infrastructure to support electric delivery vans, Britton said.
In the next few years, federal agencies could face hurdles in finding electric models to suit their needs, especially bigger cars and trucks where the market isn’t as mature.
According to a blog post from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which uses data to help agencies plan vehicle procurements, the GSA offers a “limited selection” of electric vehicles that currently includes “no electric pickup trucks.”
That could especially be a challenge for agencies such as the Defense Department and the National Park Service that tend to drive more pickup trucks and SUVs needed to handle rougher terrains.
NREL estimates that by 2026, there could be a number of “cost-effective” electric vehicles, “making them a more attractive option for federal procurement.”
As the government starts to buy more electric vehicles, too, it will need to grapple with building out sufficient infrastructure to support that procurement.
Advocates say electrifying fleets, such as the Postal Service’s delivery vans, helps alleviate that barrier somewhat because their predictable schedules and often short routes mean charging infrastructure could be located at a single depot.
‘Influencer vehicles’
Overall, electrifying the federal fleet isn’t a silver bullet for prompting more widespread electric vehicle adoption.
The entire federal fleet is just a “small slice of the total national,” accounting for just under 1% of all vehicles on U.S. roads, said Alexander Laska, transportation policy adviser for Third Way’s climate and energy program.
Thus, Laska said Biden’s push to electrify the federal fleet doesn’t obviate the need for policies such as incentives to help consumers purchase electric vehicles, efforts to support domestic clean vehicle manufacturing, and funding to build out charging infrastructure.
Still, electrifying the federal fleet could help create demand for specific electric vehicle applications and demonstrate the seriousness of the U.S. commitment to electric cars, thereby attracting investment that has largely been headed to Europe and China thus far.
The federal government also turns over vehicles much quicker than consumers, keeping vehicles often for only about five years instead of the 12 to 15 years individuals tend to hold on to their cars.
That could help to “kick-start” a used market for electric vehicles, Robyn said. Right now, there aren’t many used electric vehicles for sale, even though the majority of U.S. car sales happen in the used market, she added.
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In addition, an electric federal fleet could help increase consumers’ comfort level with electric cars, said Ben Prochazka, national director of the Electrification Coalition.
“They’re sort of like the influencer vehicles. When people see it’s the federal fleet that’s buying those and utilizing those, it proves the vehicles work,” Prochazka said.
“That’s the kind of thing that can really have a big impact on the consumer market,” he added.
