Democrats Should Be Wary of Banning Gas Vehicles

June 27, 2023

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by Ronnie Shows (Centrist Democrats of America/The Hill) ... One such agenda item is to speed the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) by blocking the sale of new gas- and diesel-powered cars and trucks.

To be clear, I don’t have any issues with people buying EVs. Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions is important to slow the pace of climate change. And what’s wrong with keeping our energy dollars in America and reducing the influence of oil rich nations like Saudi Arabia?

But Democrats must not ignore another reality: that EVs cost more than gas-powered vehicles. Therefore, it’s offensive to many low- and middle-income Americans struggling to make ends meet that they should be forced to pay more for an EV. Also, people who live in rural areas won’t have access to adequate charging stations for many years, if ever.

With this in mind, an organization I am part of, Centrist Democrats of America, did polling across the nation about voter’s views on EVs. Our results were clear: people support EVs but oppose banning the sale of new gas-powered vehicles, and don’t believe the government should prioritize — over things like building schools and better funding for police and fire resources — the building of public chargers.

Indeed, in every poll we took, from Minnesota to Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey, it wasn’t just Republicans and independents who opposed banning gas-powered vehicles, it was a plurality of Biden supporters, too.

We performed this polling because all of those states, and even the federal government, have taken steps to seek to ban the sale of new gas- and diesel-powered cars and trucks. Politically speaking, we think this is a mistake.

Most importantly, Democrats should not let the EV issue be used against us, to show our party is out of touch with average Americans. After all, that is where Republicans are today. READ MORE

Trump stokes electric car fears in Michigan: The former president is trying to capitalize on union workers' concerns about the Biden administration's push for plug-in cars. (Politico Pro Climatewire)

EV Incentives Leave U.S. Short of Biden’s Goal, CBO Finds (Politico Pro)

Ag Policy Blog: When It Comes to Fuel, EVs Have All the Answers for Biofuel Critics (DTN Progressive Farmer)

The challenges to Biden’s push for a national EV network (Politico Energy Podcast)

Unsold electric cars are piling up on dealer lots (Axios)

Electric vehicle skepticism from auto workers puts Biden in a tough spot -- White House faces an awkward balancing act as UAW negotiates contract with automakers General Motors, Ford and Stellantis (Washington Post)

A Heat Wave Will Cook Your Electric Car Battery, If You Let It: As EV adoption picks up in Arizona, Texas and other US states experiencing record high temperatures, drivers are learning to protect battery health. (Bloomberg)

Electrifying America’s Macho Trucks Is Still Too Hard (Washington Post/Bloomberg)

China’s EV Startups Are Going Bust. That’s Good (Bloomberg)

The Electric: The EV Industry Confronts the Valley of Death (The Information)

US EV market struggles with price cuts and rising inventories (Reuters)

How Americans view electric vehicles (Pew Research Center)

Electric vehicles struggle to hold up amid heat wave roasting US (Washington Examiner)

Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints (Reuters)

How Trump could slow the U.S. EV transition (Axios)

Excerpt from Politico Pro Climatewire: Former President Donald Trump is trying to tap into union autoworkers' anxieties about the switch to electric vehicles, seeking a political vulnerability in one of the Biden administration's signature economic policies.

He aimed a barrage of attacks at President Joe Biden's environmental stances during a campaign speech Sunday to about 2,000 people in Novi, Mich., contending that electric car manufacturing will destroy jobs in the auto industry. Michigan helped propel Trump to the White House in 2016 when he won a surprise victory over Hillary Clinton with an 11,000-vote margin in the state.

“Biden is a catastrophe for Michigan, and his environmental extremism is heartless and disloyal and horrible for the American worker, and you’re starting to see it,” Trump said.

Neither the White House nor the Biden campaign responded to requests for comment. But in September, Biden told a crowd at the Detroit Auto Show that Michigan is at the forefront of an industrial revolution, saying: “I believe we can own the future of the automobile market." READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico Energy Podcast: But the Biden administration estimates it only has about a fraction of the funds to reach that goal and must also manage supply chain constraints, pushback from GOP-led states and an evolving private sector. READ MORE

Excerpt from Washington Post: The UAW’s new leadership has sounded a string of alarms in recent weeks about the Biden-backed push toward electric vehicles, criticizing the relatively low pay workers are earning at one new battery factory and blasting the closure of older gasoline-vehicle factories. In contract negotiations with Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the UAW’s priorities include ensuring that workers at older factories can transition to new EV jobs, and securing pay and benefits for EV workers that match those in the gasoline era.

The union has also directed unusual ire at Biden, a longtime ally of the labor movement, asking why the government is using billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize battery and EV factories without requiring strong pay.

If progress isn’t made on the multiyear contracts covering roughly 150,000 UAW workers, some plants could go on strike as early as September.

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UAW President Shawn Fain, elected in late March with a remit to reinvigorate the union, has gone so far as to withhold the UAW’s endorsement for Biden’s reelection campaign, telling his members in a memo that the union first expects the White House to help it ensure that workers win strong pay and job security in the EV era.

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“The federal government is pouring billions into the electric vehicle transition, with no strings attached and no commitment to workers … We want to see national leadership have our back on this before we make any commitments.”

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“The President believes that new jobs building electric vehicles should be at least as good as current jobs building traditional cars — including by ensuring employers respect workers’ choice to organize a union and engage in collective bargaining. He has directed his team to take all appropriate steps to achieve that goal,” White House spokeswoman Robyn Patterson said by email.

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Some of those states are receiving large EV investments in projects that will have UAW workers. Ford last year pledged to add more than 6,200 new union jobs in Michigan, Ohio and Missouri in a mix of EV and gasoline-powered vehicle plants. Ford also agreed to recognize the UAW at a planned battery plant in Michigan if enough workers sign union cards.

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But some of the biggest new EV and battery factories are destined for southern states, including Kentucky and Tennessee, where local laws, politics and culture make it harder for unions to organize. Many of the battery plants are being set up by joint ventures between automakers and South Korean battery companies, muddling the union’s traditional strategy of negotiating directly with automakers.

New laws are directing tens of billions of federal dollars to support EVs by giving manufacturers and consumers tax credits and other incentives. Biden tried to include stronger support for unions in the legislation, pushing for a requirement that full consumer tax credits for EV purchases would apply only to vehicles built by unionized workers. But the measure never made it into law.

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So far, the UAW’s criticism about EV pay has focused on the Ultium Cells battery plant near Lordstown, Ohio, established by a joint venture between General Motors and South Korea’s LG Energy Solutions. The factory voted overwhelmingly to join the UAW late last year but does not yet have a UAW-negotiated contract.

In a video posted to the UAW YouTube Channel last week, Fain said Ultium workers start at $16.50 an hour, or roughly half of what GM workers used to get at a former gasoline-car plant in Lordstown that was shuttered in 2019.

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Last month, it blasted the Department of Energy’s decision to grant a loan of up to $9.2 billion to a joint venture between Ford and South Korea’s SK for the construction of three battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky. The “giveaway loan” was granted with “no consideration for wages, working conditions, union rights or retirement security,” the UAW said. READ MORE

Excerpt from Reuters: About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters. The automaker last year became so inundated with driving-range complaints that it created a special team to cancel owners’ service appointments.

n March, Alexandre Ponsin set out on a family road trip from Colorado to California in his newly purchased Tesla, a used 2021 Model 3. He expected to get something close to the electric sport sedan’s advertised driving range: 353 miles on a fully charged battery.

He soon realized he was sometimes getting less than half that much range, particularly in cold weather – such severe underperformance that he was convinced the car had a serious defect.

“We’re looking at the range, and you literally see the number decrease in front of your eyes,” he said of his dashboard range meter.

Ponsin contacted Tesla and booked a service appointment in California. He later received two text messages, telling him that “remote diagnostics” had determined his battery was fine, and then: “We would like to cancel your visit.”

What Ponsin didn’t know was that Tesla employees had been instructed to thwart any customers complaining about poor driving range from bringing their vehicles in for service. Last summer, the company quietly created a “Diversion Team” in Las Vegas to cancel as many range-related appointments as possible.

The Austin, Texas-based electric carmaker deployed the team because its service centers were inundated with appointments from owners who had expected better performance based on the company’s advertised estimates and the projections displayed by the in-dash range meters of the cars themselves, according to several people familiar with the matter.

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In most cases, the complaining customers’ cars likely did not need repair, according to the people familiar with the matter. Rather, Tesla created the groundswell of complaints another way – by hyping the range of its futuristic electric vehicles, or EVs, raising consumer expectations beyond what the cars can deliver. Teslas often fail to achieve their advertised range estimates and the projections provided by the cars’ own equipment, according to Reuters interviews with three automotive experts who have tested or studied the company’s vehicles. READ MORE

Excerpt from Axios: Catch up fast: Trump, the GOP frontrunner, released a video late last week that, among other things, bashed EV costs. He vowed to reverse what he called a "ridiculous Green New Deal crusade."

Trump's seeking auto workers' votes in competitive states like Michigan, at a time when the United Auto Workers leadership is skittish about EVs.

The big picture: It's hard to see the votes for outright repealing the Democrats' climate law or the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill, even if Republicans have both chambers of Congress after 2024.

Yes, but: Trump would hardly be powerless.

Zoom in: His campaign released a list of proposals alongside the video. This isn't an exhaustive list, but let's explore some of those and other ways he could alter policy.

Trump's vowing to kill the EPA's brewing tailpipe CO2 emissions rules. The agency sees bringing EVs to 67% of U.S. light-duty sales by 2032.

Reversing a completed rule is time-consuming and legally fraught. One wrinkle: if the final rule was still tied up in court when Trump took office, his administration could decline to defend it.

A Trump-led Treasury Department could take a more restrictive view of how many EV models qualify for consumer purchase subsidies up to $7,500.

The climate law tethers tax credits to key battery materials sourced, processed or recycled domestically or from free-trade partners. But Treasury has wiggle room in the interpretation.