The Electric Car Fiasco

Michael Barone on Mar 22, 2024

And irksome to charge. In the 1920s, the private sector built vast networks of gas stations capable of refueling a vehicle in five or 10 minutes. In the 2020s, the government has taken on the task of building electric charging stations, with predictable results. After more than two years, the $5 billion 2021 charging station program has produced exactly eight charging stations.

In the marketplace, it's clear the demand for electric vehicles is much smaller than that predicted by environmental enthusiasts and imposed on carmakers by the Biden administration. Toyota's hybrid gasoline-and-electric vehicles, while less fashionable in certain quarters than battery-powered EVs, are rated as more reliable and just as green, and they are outselling the all-electrics.

As the late economist Herbert Stein said, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." Projections for EV sales have fallen woefully short month after month. The Environmental Protection Agency projects EV sales will rise from 7.6% in 2023 to 67% in 2032, but the EPA's tailpipe regulations, the tool used to raise EV sales, are not on track to do so.

At least not without drastically cutting total auto production. Environmental nonprofit organizations may not mind that, but the United Auto Workers, which represents workers at Detroit's Big Three but not at Tesla or foreign-based companies, does and has demanded the administration change policy.

Which it has, sort of. The EPA is now announcing it won't enforce EV sales requirements until 2030. But it still says it's requiring two-thirds by 2032.

As you may have noticed, there are three presidential elections between now and late 2032, when Biden will turn 90 and Trump 86. Team Biden is obviously fiddling with its failed EV policies in the hopes of smoothing over the differences between its environmentalist and union constituencies, Marin County, California, and Macomb County, Michigan. That might work, up through Election Day.

Then, whoever wins, there will come something you might provocatively call a bloodbath. For an industry with large capital needs and long lead times, or for environmentalists determined to phase out vehicles that most consumers prefer and can afford -- maybe for both.

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Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. His new book, "Mental Maps of the Founders: How Geographic Imagination Guided America's Revolutionary Leaders," is now available.