In a pair of Truth Social posts Monday evening, Trump took aim at the electric vehicle industry and President Biden’s push for more electric vehicles. With this opposition to electric vehicles, Trump is likely trying to persuade Michigan voters to support him over Biden, who carried the swing state in 2020.
The Biden administration has pushed to boost electric car sales, with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) predicting that two-thirds of new car sales could be electric by 2032 under a new proposal released by the administration earlier this year. Last week, the Energy Department announced plans to invest $12 billion into converting auto manufacturing facilities into plants for hybrid and electric vehicles.
Trump also took aim at Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, for supporting the Biden administration’s latest investment into electric vehicles.
There’s an EV push?
Mainly two components of the push.
One is a lot of government money to ev charging operators, to break the chicken and egg problem of not enough chargers to inspire confidence to buy an EV, and not enough evs to justify building out chargers. I’m somewhat onboard here.
Then there’s the ev vehicle tax credit, which currently means a tax credit for people that can afford a 60k car. To their credit, they tried to cap it at 55k, which is still high, but at least not unlimited, but left a loophole that SUVs can be 80k. So of course almost every ev ends up being a suv. For a short while they said “you call it an suv, but they are really just hatchbacks” but the automakers won.
So it’s currently a tax credit for the wealthier, which is a bit frustrating. I understand the goal and broadly agree, but not totally happy that it’s a tax break for the wealthyish. Income limit was a good start, but really need to be pushing the automakers to build on low end more.