President Trump signed an executive order promising to end “the electric vehicle mandate” imposed under former President Biden. What it means for EVs and their owners.
Transcript:
CONWAY GITTENS: President Trump has signed an executive order eliminating the Biden-era electric vehicle mandate. So can you walk us through some of the major changes that we could see?
JESSICA CALDWELL: The big major change, I would say, is the cut in infrastructure spending. And maybe those funds will be directed elsewhere. But the crux of it is, is that infrastructure is so important in this sector, especially as it grows, because people need places to charge the vehicle. As early adopters have bought vehicles, people that live in cities have gotten their EVS. It needs to spread to more of the mainstream market, the suburbs. And that’s where the infrastructure really needs to be pumped up, because we’re seeing that that is one of the top reasons why people won’t even consider an EV is because they’re uncertain about infrastructure. And it’s a tricky one because it’s a combination of local government, federal government, automakers to make the whole system work and make it all make sense to to consumers.
So eliminating that is is definitely a blow, because it puts sort of the pressure on automakers to make the system work because they are moving full steam ahead with their EVS. They’ve got no choice. They have already planned for this, and they have to get customers for that. So that is, I’d say, one big element of it. And the other element of it is that he has signaled that he wants to eliminate the $7,500 tax credit for EV buyers, and that has not been finalized yet, but it feels like that could be in the works. And that tax credit has been really important, getting people to consider electric vehicles. Because when you think about the fact that you could get an EV lease for under $200 a month. That’s attractive to a lot of people. And even if they don’t ultimately buy, they at least start to consider and research and learn a little bit more about electric vehicles. So in the future, they’re a bit more prepared and maybe more open to the idea of EV.
CONWAY GITTENS: And so what does this mean in your view longer term? You know, President Biden had a plan to have half of all new vehicles in the us be electric by 2030. So what happens to that plan? And is there still a future for electric in America?
JESSICA CALDWELL: There’s definitely still a future for electric in America. I think that’s ultimately where we are going. It feels like in the auto industry, the big themes are electrification and autonomous technology. So cars that drive themselves on a battery. The question though is is like, what is that timeline and how does that keep getting affected by, you know, who’s in the White House. Because that obviously is what we’ve seen with President Trump. Biden now, President Trump again, you know, because he’ll, you know, he’s going to be in office for, you know, for a while almost to that 2030 timeline. So clearly that probably is off the table. At least it’s not a mandate that he’s going to push. But automakers again, they’ve been working in the wings to to work towards that mandate.
So it’s not as if they can stop everything that they’ve been doing and spending millions and millions of dollars on. So they’re still going to carry on. It’s just the probably the market that’s going to be the x factor. It’s like they can build the vehicles and make them great, but if people don’t buy them, then that really is the issue. So, you know, it’s almost like they’re going to try to get there as best they can, but it feels like there’s not going to be a lot of support there. So I do think that long term though, EVS will happen. It just it seems pretty murky at this point in time though.
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