EPA Seeks to Boost EVs With Toughest-Ever Rules on Tailpipe Emissions - WSJ
Category: News & Politics
Via: vic-eldred • last year • 17 commentsBy: Ken Thomas and Ryan Felton (WSJ)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
WASHINGTON—The Biden administration is proposing new limits on vehicle tailpipe emissions, seeking to spur U.S. auto makers to generate two-thirds of their sales through electric vehicles in a decade.
The new standards for light-duty vehicles, announced Wednesday by the Environmental Protection Agency, will apply to the 2027 to 2032 model years. They would be the nation’s toughest-ever restrictions on car pollution and one of President Biden’s most aggressive moves yet to combat climate change.
The proposal moves beyond Mr. Biden’s ambitious target for half of all new-vehicle sales to be electric-powered by 2030. The EPA projects that the EVs could account for 67% of new- vehicle sales by the 2032 model year.
A separate proposal, covering medium-duty vehicles such as box trucks and school buses, is expected to electrify nearly half of those vehicles by the 2032 model year.
Biden administration officials said the proposal for light-duty vehicles, which includes passenger cars, sport-utility vehicles and pickup trucks, is designed to allow auto manufacturers to meet performance-based standards and comply through an array of emission-control technologies. Most are expected to reach those goals through electrification. The proposal is expected to be completed in spring 2024.
Ali Zaidi, White House national climate adviser, cited the swift pace of adoption of electric vehicles, saying that in the past two years during Mr. Biden’s presidency, the number of available electric-vehicle models has doubled, as has the number of charging stations.
“We have re-established the United States as a leader in the clean transportation future,” Mr. Zaidi said. “Technologies pioneered here are once again being manufactured on factory floors.”
Many Republicans have questioned similar proposals in the past, pointing to sticker shock and higher costs facing consumers at dealer lots.
“The Biden administration made clear it wants to decide for Americans what kinds of cars and trucks we are allowed to buy, lease, and drive,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R., W. Va.). She said the “misguided emissions standards” were made without considering supply-chain challenges, a lack of electric-vehicle charging infrastructure and the challenge of receiving permits to mine the minerals needed for EVs.
Others asserted that the measures didn’t go far enough to address climate change.
“The draft rule fails to require any improvement in the tens of millions of new gas guzzlers,” Dan Becker of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity said, adding that the plan falls short of “pollution cut necessary to protect our planet.”
Auto-industry executives have warned that their shift to electrification faces a number of barriers, including an insufficient availability of public and private EV charging stations and access to raw materials used to produce batteries.
The EPA estimated that the benefits of the proposal would exceed costs by at least $1 trillion. The proposal is expected to avoid 7.3 billion tons of carbon-dioxide emissions through 2055, EPA Administrator Michael Regan said. According to the agency, that is the equivalent of the amount from the U.S. transportation sector for four years.
Major auto makers have been moving forward to shift their vehicle lineups to include more battery-powered cars, encouraged by the success of Tesla Inc. and tougher tailpipe-emissions standards around the globe.
Auto companies have already pledged targets similar to those pushed by the White House. In 2021, General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis NV, which makes Jeep models, jointly voluntarily agreed to a target of 40% to 50% of their annual U.S. vehicle sales to be electric by 2030, in line with the administration’s goal at the time.
The revamped emissions standards were set in motion in a 2021 executive order from Mr. Biden, which set a target for electric vehicles, hydrogen-fuel cell vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles to make up 50% of U.S. sales by 2030. The executive order also called for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to complete new corporate average fuel-economy targets for the 2027 model year and beyond no later than July 2024.
A NHTSA spokeswoman said the agency expects its CAFE rule to be proposed soon.
In the years since Mr. Biden signed the order, Congress passed laws that provided measures aimed at accelerating the pace of EV adoption, including the climate, health and tax law known as the Inflation Reduction Act and the roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill . Both offered funding to subsidize the purchase of battery-powered vehicles for consumers and to support the build-out of fast-charging public infrastructure that, for now, is spotty and unreliable.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a lobbying group that represents GM, Ford, Toyota Motor Corp. and other major car companies, told White House officials at a February meeting that EV adoption depends on factors outside the control of auto makers, including a build-out of robust charging infrastructure and the supply of necessary minerals to make batteries.
The group sought a shorter period of model years that the coming rules cover to reduce risk and uncertainty, according to minutes of the meeting.
“Even with positive EV sales momentum and product excitement, there are challenges to the electrification transition ahead,” the alliance said in a recent statement.
Another challenge could be continuity at the White House as Mr. Biden gears up for his expected 2024 re-election campaign. Just before leaving office in 2017, President Barack Obama set tailpipe-emissions standards, only to see President Donald Trump ’s administration roll back those rules .
That sort of back-and-forth makes planning difficult for the auto industry, which has long lead times and requires significant amounts of capital before companies sell their products to customers, said Lawrence Burns, former corporate vice president of research and development and planning at GM.
“If the requirements keep bouncing around, I don’t see how anyone wins,” Mr. Burns said.
The EPA’s proposal follows even more aggressive moves taken by California regulators, who last year banned new gasoline-powered car sales by 2035, and Japan, which has said it plans to stop the sale of such vehicles in the middle of the next decade. The European Union is debating a measure effectively prohibiting sales of vehicles with internal-combustion engines around that time.
Meanwhile, the U.S. auto industry is contending with a change in leadership at the United Auto Workers, a union that represents more than 400,000 workers in the automotive sector and other industries. The organization’s new leader, Shawn Fain, has pledged to make EV manufacturing a point of focus in contract negotiations with GM, Ford and Stellantis, which begin later this year.
Former EPA officials and analysts said the new emissions targets should become more easily attainable for the industry because of the additional government spending supported by the Inflation Reduction Act and infrastructure laws.
“Both of these massive investment laws are in place that should be expediting the ability of car and truck manufacturers to meet more-ambitious standards than what the president expected in 2021,” said Margo Oge, former head of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, on a call Tuesday with reporters.
Analysts have said that auto makers are already moving ahead toward building more EVs and potentially risk losing market share if they don’t keep pace with consumer demand. EVs accounted for 8.5% of total auto-industry sales in the first quarter of this year, according to J.D. Power, an industry research firm.
The new EPA regulations would provide more certainty for companies on how to expend their resources in the coming years, said Thomas Boylan, regulatory director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, a trade group that supports EV adoption.
“It all sort of makes sure that folks are rowing in the same direction and gives them the cover to deploy the capital,” said Mr. Boylan, who previously worked for the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality.
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Despite the next election already upon us and a Republican House, Biden continues to tilt to the far left. He continues to force this issue on Americans. We are nowhere close to having electric cars being a norm, nor can we support it. Even if we could wave a magic wand and go there, what good is it if major polluters like China and India continue to pollute?
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The rest of this thread was removed for no value and unnecessary nastiness.
Just another reason to vote against Democrats. They are completely out of touch with reality; and willing to ruin this country to achieve their goals.
Without an overhaul of the entire power grid across the country; and a complete network of affordable fast recharging stations- all of the Democrat's environmental wet dreams will lead to nothing but ruin.
But China loves Brandon for it. They will gladly sell us all of the wind turbines and solar panels we want.
You bet. They know the democrats will fanatically pursue this and China is buying up all the key resources for electric cars.
So Biden is going to further the push to EV's, pushing the market rather than let the people decide the market. Sounds like a winning formula to be sure... /s
EV's were only about 7% of new car sales for 2022. EVs remain far more expensive and less efficient than other types. Overall, according to Kelly Blue Book the average cost of an EV wsa $64,338 while the average cost of a compact gas powered car was $26,101. The Dept of Energy reported that the average range of model year 2021 gas vehicles was 403 miles where the median range of 2021 EV's was around 234 miles.
So who is hurt the most by forcing the consumer to purchase an EV type vehicle? Of course it's the poor who are hurt the most. This from an administration who claims to want to support them... sigh
They've been taking it on the chin for 2 years now. The college crowd seems to be outvoting them.
The government has been screwing up cars and bothering drivers for a long time. Somethings have helped but more have been not what drivers want..
Let people buy the cars they want not what bureaucrats think we should have.
We had one on here who conflated the industrial revolution to what Biden is forcing on the people. Of course, we both know that the market reflects what people want. Biden simply does what the radical left wants.
Radical left or radical right? Meh the radical middle, which will eventually be just as bad as either, is coming to annihilate both.
As to "Biden simply does what the radical left wants." Were that so he would not have approved the Willow project in Alaska. You are not dumb Vic and it would help your cause if you stopped saying dumb things.