President Biden's administration plans to withdraw strict new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules that would have forced American automakers to make electric vehicles their main business by 2032. That's according The New York Times, who wrote yesterday that industry players had asked the administration to give them more time to reduce the costs of electric vehicles and for nationwide charging infrastructure to be more fully built out.
He Times writes that union leaders pressured Biden to give them more time to expand union membership to those working at new U.S. electric vehicle plants. As the article notes, union support is crucial now as Biden faces a re-election in which he finds himself caught between a terrible climate situation and attacks from candidate and former president Donald Trump.
The EPA's original requirements called for electric vehicles to account for 67 percent of new light-duty vehicle sales and 46 percent of new mid-size vehicle sales by 2032, a huge increase from the projected 7.6 percent. . Times notes from last year. Sales of electric vehicles have slowed, leaving the goal even further out of reach for a variety of reasons, one of which is that the auto industry has insisted on large electric pickup trucks and SUVs that the supply chain is not prepared to accommodate affordably.
