On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce tough new exhaust emissions standards designed to effectively force the auto industry to phase out the sale of gas-powered cars. It’s an ambitious — and risky — move by the Biden administration to further its climate goals by boosting the sale of electric vehicles as we usher in the end of the internal combustion engine (ICE) era.
But it will not be as easy as banning the sale of gas-powered cars or requiring companies to only sell cars with electric motors. Instead, the new EPA rules will put an emissions cap on the total number of new cars each automaker sells in a year. This limit would essentially ensure that two-thirds of the vehicles they sold in the US by 2032 will be electric vehicles, according to a report by New York times. Full details are expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The effort to make this a reality would be very colossal. Automakers have already embarked on a path of more electric vehicle sales, but plug-in cars still represent a fraction of the overall auto market in the United States. Taking them from where they are today, with about 7 percent of new auto sales, to where the Biden administration wants them, roughly 68 percent of all auto sales, would be like nothing ever attempted in the auto industry’s 150-year history. .
The effort to make this a reality must be very massive
Take this past January, for example: Electric vehicles accounted for 7.83 percent of new car sales in the United States, with 66,416 battery electric vehicles sold and 14,143 plug-in hybrids. The same month also saw 950,000 new ICE lightweight vehicles sold, as well as nearly 3 million other used vehicles. The EPA under President Biden is basically trying to flip those numbers.
None of this should come as a surprise, however, to policymakers or automakers, according to Chris Harto, senior policy analyst for the transportation and energy sector at Consumer Reports. The EPA has been indicating that these new standards will be released this spring for a while now and roughly align with Biden’s climate goals. Immediately after taking office, the president signed an executive order outlining his vision for half of all new car sales to be zero-emissions by 2030.
As to how messy the transition will be, much will depend on how the auto industry responds, Harto said. “Technological transitions tend to be chaotic when companies fail to respond effectively to rapid shifts in consumer demand,” he said in an email. “Automakers that respond agilely to changes in consumer demand will be most successful, and those that don’t find themselves falling behind quickly.”
And of course, we have California to thank for this new course of action. Last year, the California Air Resources Board issued new rules, first introduced by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2020, that require 100 percent of new cars sold in the state to be carbon-neutral by 2035. California is the largest market. For cars in the United States and one of the largest in the world, emissions rules adopted by the state tend to spread across the rest of the country.
“Automakers that respond gracefully to changes in consumer demand will be more successful, and those that don’t find themselves falling behind quickly.”
In fact, other states have since followed California in setting their own deadlines to phase out sales of gas cars, including Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Washington.
But inevitably, the federal government will have to take a different approach. President Joe Biden likely won’t want to open himself up to too much criticism by issuing an executive order banning the sale of gas vans. Attack ads practically write themselves. Republicans are already resisting the president’s push to increase electric vehicle sales, albeit somewhat incoherently. Instead, we get “new light vehicle greenhouse gas (GHG) and emissions rules for model year 2027 through 2032” — which doesn’t quite roll.
The EPA proposal follows new rules from the Treasury Department regarding vehicles eligible for the $7,500 tax credit passed as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The new rules address outstanding issues related to the source of the critical metals found inside an EV battery and are expected to lead to That means fewer electric vehicles are eligible for the credit.
Harto said the new rules will help sync federal rules with state efforts to restrict the sale of gas-powered vehicles, which will be good for businesses and good for consumers. “For at least the next few years, the primary bottleneck in EV adoption will be vehicle supply,” he said. “Consumers can’t buy cars that automakers don’t make. These standards will help ensure that automakers actually deliver the kinds of vehicles that consumers want.”
Biden likely wouldn’t want to open himself up to too much criticism by issuing an executive order banning the sale of gas-powered cars.
The auto industry is already preparing for the big news. On April 6th, the Coalition for Automotive Innovation, which represents practically all of the major auto companies, released a memo to its members outlining what it knows about the EPA’s upcoming rules.
The new rules “will result in significantly stricter greenhouse gas and emissions standards than ever before,” says the coalition, while also promoting all auto companies claiming they have already spent or committed to spending (an estimated $1.2 trillion in total) on the EV transmission.
The auto industry is proud of this number. He talks about her a lot in her PR communications. And to be sure, it’s a big number! But automakers aren’t exactly embracing the administration’s efforts to force a faster electric vehicle transition. Special interests rarely get excited about new regulations. Instead, they warn of a “challenging” future ahead as management rules come into force.
“This requires a massive 100-year change to the American industrial base and the way Americans drive,” the coalition memorandum concludes. A clear assessment of market readiness is required. The answer to the feasibility of the rule is: it depends. “
Of course, the EPA has bigger concerns than whether the auto industry believes its new rules will be possible. Transportation is a major source of carbon emissions, and much of that is from tailpipe pollution. The climate crisis does not care whether the car market is ready or not. The future is being written now, and for ICE vehicles, its days are numbered.