President Joe Biden’s new EV mandates will likely prove to be a sizable wealth transfer from rural red regions of America to urban blue sections, and to wealthy Democrats who reside in them, according to reports.
The Biden administration has imposed the “strictest” rules in history for the auto industry staring in 2027. On March 20, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its tailpipe emissions rules for the auto industry, which will effectively force carmakers to have one-third of new car sales be plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) by 2027 and more than two-thirds by 2032.
The rule will likely prove to be “a sizable wealth transfer from rural red regions of America to urban blue sections, and to wealthy Democrats who reside in them,” according to reports.
News reports say that the new regulation represents a dramatic increase from current EV sales, which were about 8 percent of the new car market in 2023.
While environmentalists cheer, critics say that the measures will be particularly punitive for huge segments of the U.S. population who don’t want, can’t use, or can’t afford EVs. If carmakers go with the rules, the cost of remaining gas-fired cars and trucks will likely escalate as demand dwarfs supply.
Energy analyst, Robert Bryce, said, “In reality it’s a type of class warfare that will prevent low- and middle-income consumers from being able to afford new cars.”
As many traditional car buyers struggle, the federal subsidies and incentives continue to flow, to the benefit of EV buyers.
According to an October 2023 report by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, as much as $48,000 of the cost of the average EV sold in the United States is paid, not by the owner, but in the form of “socialized costs” that are spread out among taxpayers and electricity consumers over a 10-year period.
These socialized costs come in the form of taxes, government subsidies, fuel economy credits paid by gas carmakers to EV manufacturers, and higher electricity bills as consumers absorb the capital costs required to expand the power grid and install new charging stations.
The report states that “the average model year 2021 EV would cost $48,698 more to own over a 10-year period without $22 billion in government favors given to EV manufacturers and owners.”
These dollars, which do not take into account the additional dollars that gas-car owners will likely pay for their vehicles as manufacturers are forced to make fewer of them, amount to a government-mandated wealth transfer to affluent EV owners, paid by those who often cannot afford to buy EVs.
The new EPA mandate is “aimed at accommodating a very narrow segment of the auto-buying public: wealthy, white Democrats who live in a handful of liberal communities,” Mr. Bryce said. “EV ownership is largely defined by class, ideology, and geogaphy.”
Bryce reported in Epoch Times that 57 percent of EV owners earn more than $100,000 annually, 75 percent are male, and 87 percent are white. In addition, EV buyers are overwhelmingly Democrats, with 71 percent of Republicans stating in a Gallup poll that they would not consider owning an electric vehicle.
Data from the Department of Energy supports this view. As of year-end 2022, California had 903,600 registered EVs in the state, or 37 percent of all EVs owned nationwide.
The next largest number of EV owners were in Florida, Texas, and Washington state, with 168,000, 149,000, and 104,100 EVs respectively, followed by New Jersey, New York, Georgia, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.
According to a report by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, “if you count all the EVs in North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Mississippi, West Virginia, Alabama, Montana, and Idaho, they account for less than one percent of the total U.S. sales.”
In attempting to force Americans to switch to electric cars, a number of blue states including California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington are on track to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035, according to non profit group Coltura, which advocates for the switch from gasoline to electric cars.
There are practical reasons why people are unwilling to spend thousands of dollars more on electric cars. According to a November 2023 AAA survey, the primary reasons for people not to buy electric cars are a lack of charging stations, limited range, and time to charge the battery.
A recent Rasmussen poll found that 65 percent of Americans surveyed don’t think they’re likely to make an EV their next automobile purchase.
Another poll of voters found that only 14 percent were strongly in favor of regulations to phase out gas-powered cars and trucks, while nearly 60 percent were against. Opinions split along party lines, with 53 of Democrats in favor of the EPA regulations and 76 percent of Republicans against, with 59 percent of independents also opposing.
The strongest support for EV mandates came from people earning more than $150,000 a year.
The Clean Freight Coalition, a trucking trade group that supports a transition away from fossil fuels, said that the timeline set by the new EPA rules was impossible to meet given current technology and infrastructure, and that the Biden administration’s EV plan would bring significant harm to commercial vehicle operators, the businesses they serve, and consumers.
Jim Mullen, Clean Freight Coalition executive director, told the Washington Examiner, “Today, these vehicles fail to meet the operational demands of many motor carrier operations, reduce the payload of trucks, and thereby require more trucks to haul the same amount of freight, and lack sufficient charging and alternative fueling infrastructure to support adoption.”
The reliably pro-Democrat United Auto Workers Union (UAW) initially opposed the EPA mandate, fearing lost jobs due to the fact that EVs require fewer American workers to assemble components that often originate in China and that many of the new EV assembly plants being built by carmakers are in non-union states like Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama.
The UAW came around to supporting the EV plan, however, after the EPA adjusted its regulations to slow the pace of the transition.
The Biden administration’s barrage of climate-related energy and automotive mandates, critics say, fall into a category of what a recent report by the Cato Institute calls “policy beyond capability.”
