By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. government agencies missed the Biden administration's electric vehicle fleet purchasing targets and purchased more than four times as many gasoline-powered models, according to a Government Accountability Office report released on Tuesday. .
In the 2023 budget year, agencies purchased 25,300 gasoline vehicles and a total of 5,500 electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, 60% of the combined goal of 9,500 from 11 agencies, according to the report.
In December 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order directing the government to end purchases of gasoline vehicles by 2035 and requiring all federal purchases of light vehicles by the end of 2027 to be electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids.
The GAO said officials at nine of the 11 selected agencies said meeting electric vehicle goals “will depend largely on factors outside the control of the facilitating agencies,” including the state of charging infrastructure and whether there are enough zero-emission vehicles available for federal purchase.
In 2022, the General Services Administration estimated that the federal government could need more than 100,000 charging ports to transition the federal fleet to zero-emission vehicles. But as of November, federal agencies had activated 10,500 charging ports nationwide, with the installation of about 52,500 charging ports in the works, the GAO said.
The GSA said government orders for electric vehicles in 2023 were about 63% higher than in 2022, and in the first quarter of the 2024 budget year, the government ordered 4,000 electric vehicles, or nearly 30% of all cars and trucks. GSA's electric vehicle orders include Tesla (NASDAQ Model Y and Model 3, Chevrolet Equinox EV and Ford (NYSE Mach-Es.
The GSA and the White House had no immediate comment.
Biden's order covered about 380,000 federal vehicles. It does not cover vehicles from the US Postal Service, which is an independent government entity. Last week, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy defended the Postal Service's plan to purchase about 66,000 electric vehicles by 2028 using $3 billion in congressional funds to subsidize electric vehicle charging and vehicle purchases.
Reuters reported on Monday that President-elect Donald Trump's transition team is recommending sweeping changes to cut support for electric vehicles, including eliminating requirements for federal agencies to purchase electric vehicles.
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