On March 20, the Biden administration announced a “final rule” that will drastically reduce the availability of new gasoline-powered vehicles over the next decade while artificially increasing the sales of electric vehicles (EVs). The rule, titled “Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles” was officially released by the Environmental Protection Agency and will essentially ensure that by 2032, nearly 70 percent of new vehicles sold in the United States will be EVs or hybrids.
Shortly after the rule was announced, President Biden crowed, “Three years ago, I set an ambitious target: that half of all new cars and trucks sold in 2030 would be zero-emission … we’ll meet my goal for 2030 and race forward in the years ahead.”
Although Biden and his cadre of climate alarmists seem giddy about the prospect of making the gasoline-powered vehicle a thing of the past for hard-working Americans, they would be wise to second-guess that decision.
At present, more than 60 percent of Americans say that they “will not” or “likely will not” consider buying an EV the next time they purchase a vehicle. Surprisingly, the cohort of Americans who are decidedly against purchasing an EV in the future has increased over the past few years, despite massive subsidies aimed at making EVs “more affordable.”
Specifically, the group of Americans most likely to refrain from purchasing an EV happen to reside in suburban and rural areas.
It makes perfect sense that most Americans remain skeptical about purchasing an EV in the near future. For starters, EVs are more expensive than their gasoline-powered counterparts. EVs are also less reliable than gasoline-powered vehicles in cold-weather conditions, can take several hours to recharge, produce “range anxiety,” generally cost more to repair than gasoline-powered cars, and produce toxic fumes and public safety concerns when they catch on fire.
However, despite the many problems with EVs and their unpopularity among the American populace, the Biden administration is putting the pedal to the metal with its plan to eventually replace gasoline-powered cars and trucks with EVs.
Biden and the climate change charlatans who are deeply entrenched throughout the federal government are essentially declaring war on mobility by making it more difficult for ordinary Americans to own an affordable and reliable mode of private transportation.
Believe it or not, the gasoline-powered vehicle was a total game-changer for the United States in the years after World War II. In post-war America, the rise of affordable and reliable gasoline-powered cars combined with the vast expansion of the nation’s highway system and the explosion of suburbanization made Americans the most “mobile” people on the planet.
This was a far cry from the way things used to be, when the overwhelming majority of Americans lived in close quarters in highly congested urban environments because most jobs were located in or near cities and most people could not travel vast distances efficiently.
This also reminds me of the really old days, when American workers basically resided in “company towns” because they lacked the ability to travel to and from work before the advent of the gasoline-powered car and the assembly-line manufacturing process made these new vehicles available to the masses.
In essence, the Biden administration wants to rewind the clock back to the bad old days when most Americans were generally immobile, lived in cramped urban environments, and depended on public transportation when they needed to traverse vast distances. Those also happened to be the times in which only the wealthy elites could afford personal transportation and homes outside of the densely populated cities.
Sadly, this is the period in which Biden and his global warming reprobates want to return us to. They want us living in “15-minute cities,” ordering everything we need online, working remotely, and generally staying within a contained geographic radius, so as not to increase carbon dioxide emissions, or so they say.
The gasoline-powered car in all of its splendor is a huge threat to the wholesale reorganization of society that the climate change comrades have sought to impose for the past few decades. Moreover, the affordable and reliable gasoline-powered car represents the essence of freedom in modern society. It allows anyone to move freely at their whim. It makes it possible for people to work in places and shop at stores far from where they live. The wide availability of gasoline-powered cars has helped make America the beacon of freedom it has become.
On the other hand, EVs remain a luxury for the elites who can afford to pay the premium price for them while not worrying about the pitfalls. And, it should be noted that EVs are much easier to track because they are like computers on wheels, meaning the government could easily surveil one’s driving record or put in place a “kill switch” for whatever reason.
This is all about control and the government’s lust for more power over we the people. While it is depressing that President Biden and the EPA have decided to finalize this ludicrous rule, the good news is that a future president can also undo it.
Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.