Officials with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are thinking about a plan that will radically boost the sales of electric vehicles throughout the U.S. starting in 2030 and rapidly accelerating out through 2032, as explained in a report from The New York Times.
these proposed rules from the EPA would seek to make sure that at least 6% of all commercial passenger vehicles sold throughout the U.S. will be all-electric by as soon as 2032, sources have explained to the Times. For comparison, last year EVs accounted for just about 5.8^ of all vehicle sales.
“This is a massive undertaking,” stated the president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, John Bozzella, a lobbyist for U.S. and foreign automakers. “It is nothing short of a complete transformation of the automotive industrial base and the automotive market.”
To go along with this entirely unprecedented push to increase EV sales, the Biden administration is also planning to initiate a crackdown on tailpipe emissions for all cars manufactured between 2027-2032, as reported by Bloomberg. The new rules on tailpipe emissions would apply to both light trucks and cars and are expected to be announced officially in Detroit this past Wednesday.
Late last week, White House officials put out a new fact sheet that announced a series of investments for the car industry in an effort to get EV sales to rise up to half of all new car sales by 2030. As part of the Inflation Reduction Act from Biden, which seeks “to bring a clean, safe, affordable, and reliable transportation future to Americans,” certain buyers will get tax credits for the buying of both new and used EVs.
“These incentives complement investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and other federal initiatives that are spurring the domestic manufacturing of EVs and batteries and the development of a national EV charging network that provides access to low income and disadvantaged communities,” explained the White House in another statement.
The EPA’s newly proposed standards would end up pushing the U.S. to the forefront of the world for the regulation of carbon emissions, which has been argued to be the leading actor in climate change by the Biden administration. The European Union is planning to start the phasing out of all gas-powered vehicles by as soon as 2035, and both Canada and the U.K. have drawn up gas-powered vehicle bans similar to the E.U., reported the Times.
