US Eases Emission Rules and Slows Transition to Electric Vehicles

The administration of US President Joe Biden intends to ease the proposed annual targets of a comprehensive plan for aggressively reducing emissions from cars and increasing electric vehicle sales by 2030, Reuters has learned from two unnamed sources.

Automakers and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union have urged Biden’s administration to slow the proposed increase in electric vehicle sales. They say that electric vehicle technology is still too expensive for many mainstream car buyers in the US and that more time is needed to develop the infrastructure for charging them.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed in April 2023 that by 2032, the share of electric vehicles in newly manufactured vehicles should be 56 percent. According to the initial EPA proposal covering the period from 2027 to 2032, automakers were expected to achieve a 60 percent share of electric vehicles in new vehicle production by 2030 and 67 percent share by 2032.

According to a revised final rule to be published next month, the EPA will ease the pace of its proposed annual emission requirements through 2030. Under the new pace, electric vehicles are expected to account for less than 60 percent of total vehicles produced by 2030, sources reported.

The UAW, which supported Biden in January despite claims from Republican Donald Trump that Biden’s vehicle rules threaten jobs in the auto industry, stated that the EPA’s proposal should be revised to make the transition ‘more gradual’ and over a ‘longer period of time’.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation (a trade group representing General Motors, Ford Motor, Stellantis, Toyota, Volkswagen, and other companies) called last year’s initial EPA proposal ‘unreasonable and unattainable’ and requested ‘adoption of requirements between 40 to 50 percent by 2030.’ Electric vehicles accounted for only about eight percent of sales in 2023.

AAI CEO John Bozzella said on Sunday that the next few years will be critical for the electric vehicle market.

– Give the market and supply chains a chance to catch up, leave the customer the option to choose, allow more public charging to be online, let industrial credits and the Inflation Reduction Act do their part and influence that shift in the auto industry – Bozzella said.