Biden’s green fantasy of two-thirds electric cars sales in 2032 is just not happening

Heavy, short-ranged, slow to charge, hard to maintain. But at least they're expensive

Last year, Joe Biden’s White House and his command-and-control regulators at the EPA imposed new emissions standards designed to force automakers to invest billions into retooling their plants and processes to crank out increasing percentages of electric vehicles. The Biden goal is to force two thirds of all cars sold in the US to be EVs by 2032, whether consumers want them or not.

At the end of January, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that sales of EVs, hybrid cars, and plug-in hybrids combined to make up about 16 per cent of US light duty vehicle sales during 2023. Sales of battery electric vehicles (BEVs), the type targeted by the administration’s suite of subsidies, penalties and mandates, accounted for 7 per cent of that 16 per cent for the year. That’s a significant rise since 2021, when BEVs accounted for just less than 3 per cent of US sales.

So, progress is being made towards the administration’s goal, but, with a presidential election looming this November, the domestic EV industry saw itself beset by an array of troubling indicators and events during the second half of the year. Foremost among these was the leveling-off of demand for electric cars, causing dealer lots to become filled with unsellable EV models as the months rolled by. A lack of demand for used BEVs created even further difficulties at the dealership level.