President Joe Biden is backtracking on unpopular environmental policies as November’s presidential election comes closer.
His administration announced Wednesday that it will impose lower auto tailpipe emissions requirements through 2029 and will not require as many pure electric vehicles to be sold.
Biden has faced pushback from automakers on EV targets, with trade groups arguing that the administration’s sales targets are impossible in the intended time frame and would risk limiting consumer choice, disadvantaging the auto industry, and pushing prices higher for all vehicles.
Republicans, including Donald Trump, the presumptive presidential nominee, are attacking the targets, saying they constitute an EV mandate that would make U.S. drivers dependent on China, which controls the critical minerals supply chain for EV battery manufacturing.
The Environmental Protection Agency will press for 67% of new vehicles sold to be electric by 2032, the same as was proposed last year, but it will allow automakers to include other types of vehicles, including plug-in hybrids and improved internal combustion engine vehicles, not just pure battery-powered vehicles.
Speaking on a media call Tuesday evening, administration officials said the new rules for passenger cars, light trucks, and medium-duty vehicles beginning in 2027 are still the strongest-ever tailpipe reduction standards. They insisted this would help Biden achieve his goal of more than 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide reductions by 2055.
The regulations will reduce fine particulate emissions by 95% and nitrogen oxide emissions and other ozone smog precursors by about 75%, as Biden promised.
“With transportation as the largest source of U.S. climate emissions, these strongest-ever pollution standards for cars solidify America’s leadership in building a clean transportation future and creating good-paying American jobs, all while advancing President Biden’s historic climate agenda,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan told reporters.
Still, senior administration officials stressed Tuesday that sales of plug-in hybrids and purely electric vehicle sales in the United States have started to increase beginning in the last few months of 2023, surpassing U.S. sales targets of 1 million EVs last year.
Prices for EVs in the U.S. are continuing to decline, senior administration officials said, aided further by the consumer tax credit provision in the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides consumers with up to $7,500 in EV subsidies.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Still, American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers said in a statement that the revised standards would eliminate most new gas cars and hybrids within a decade.
“This regulation will make new gas-powered vehicles unavailable or prohibitively expensive for most Americans,” he said. “For them, this wildly unpopular policy is going to feel and function like a ban.”
