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Facing strong political headwinds, mostly driven by the UAW, the Biden administration is expected to ease emissions targets and slow the EV rollout.
The Game of Emissions and EVs
As a kid, I played a game with the other neighborhood kids called “Red Light, Green Light”. It involved trying to race ahead under the “Green light” go-ahead signal. “Red light” of course meant stop and if you got caught, you had to go back and start again. Which seems weirdly analogous to the Biden administration’s current game of automotive emissions regulations and electric vehicle (EV) production.
President Biden would like to cut America’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and eliminate them altogether by 2050. To do so, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rolled out the toughest vehicle emission regulations ever, last spring. Additionally, the president set targets for electric vehicle production that would, in theory, encourage consumers to make the switch from gas to battery power.
These objectives, and more, were baked into the massive infrastructure bills signed into law over a year ago. This would be the “Green light” part of the analogy. But here we are in 2024 and President Biden wants to get re-elected.
Behold the Power of the UAW
To do so likely requires the support of the automotive unions who endorsed him 4 years ago. Unfortunately for the president, shortly after the EPA unveiled those new emissions regulations, the United Auto Workers (UAW) proclaimed they would be withholding that presidential endorsement. “Red light!”
Forced to go backward in this fun game of politics and greenhouse gases, the Biden administration bowed to the UAW pressure and is planning to relax the timing of all these bold plans according to a NY Times article citing an anonymous source.
These emissions targets that the EPA wanted to make happen were designed so that 67% of all cars and light trucks sold in the US would be electric vehicles by 2032. As of 2023, that figure was not quite 8%. In other words, the American automotive industry would have to undergo, arguably, its most radical transformation in history.
Cars and Global Warming
The targets are based around the need for government-level efforts to slow global warming. As James Glynn of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University puts plainly, “You’ll have faster warming if U.S. transportation emissions don’t decline before 2030.”
According to EPA models, pushing back the timeline on when automakers need to dramatically ramp up EV sales until after 2030 would still have the same impact on removing auto-related emissions by 2055, but in the near term, the improvement would be limited.
However, the speed at which this industry transition happens is important from a practical perspective. As John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation says, “Pace matters. Give the supply chain a chance to catch up, maintain a customer’s ability to choose, let more public charging come online.”
Slowing the EV Rollout
So, along with relaxing timing around emissions targets, the Biden administration is planning to stretch out the timeline on how quickly automakers must convert to selling mostly EVs.
Backing off on how fast automakers must ramp up EV production is a bit easier to justify considering the changes in consumer demand for these vehicles. A demand that has not been quite as strong as manufacturers hoped, with some buyers put off by high sticker prices and a national charging infrastructure that isn’t fully baked yet.
Even mighty Tesla, maker of vehicles like the Model Y, has been slashing prices of its cars and SUVs by thousands of dollars due to slowing sales. And they enjoy market dominance in the EV sector. Not too long ago, Ford’s Lightning pickup had a waiting list some 200,000 strong. But the automaker only sold around 24,000 Lightnings in 2023, well off its projection of 150,000 units.
Now, these are relatively big numbers and part of an industry-wide EV sales increase of more than 50% over the prior year. In fact, a record 9.2% of all new cars sold in the US last year were EVs or plug-in hybrids according to research by Energy Innovation and the REPEAT Project. But it’s not clear that rate of improvement can continue when you take out the early adopters.
Political Reality
Nonetheless, these same researchers note that even if EV sales only rise by 30% to 40% for 2025, it would still be possible to meet the original emissions targets. Whether that’s the case or not, the Biden administration cannot ignore the UAW, which is asking to slow things down, for more than one reason.
For one thing, the UAW is leery of swinging too quickly into massive EV production as building them requires fewer workers than traditional gas-powered models. On top of that, there has been a flurry of new EV production facilities opening around the country, particularly in the South, that are not unionized. Naturally, these two factors are giving the UAW pause, which is driving much of the Biden administration backpedaling.
But even if automakers did press on and roll out huge numbers of EVs over the next few years, there’s no guarantee consumer demand would be there. According to this S&P Global analysis from 2023, there are about 126,000 Level 2 chargers in the US, a number which continues to grow. But it would need to grow to 2 million units by 2030 to support the growth envisioned by the proposed rules.
So, for now, the vision of an electrified vehicle future will likely continue to happen in fits and starts as automakers, the UAW, consumers, and the federal government play a constantly evolving game of Red Light, Green Light.
