by Daniel Greenfield
This is the end of the American car industry.
The Biden administration is effectively moving to ban cars. And they’re not even hiding this. The spin here isn’t even that this is about “air quality”, but that it’s about forcing consumers to buy electric cars (which they can’t afford) in the wake of Ford losing $3 billion on worthless battery vehicles.
E.P.A. Is Said to Propose Rules Meant to Drive Up Electric Car Sales Tenfold – New York Times
This abomination is why the EPA’s ability to set emissions rules needs to go. And any such proposed measures should be subjected to the same scrutiny, up to the Supreme Court level, as Trump’s census question was.
The Biden administration is planning some of the most stringent auto pollution limits in the world, designed to ensure that all-electric cars make up as much as 67 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the country by 2032, according to two people familiar with the matter.
These are not air pollution regs, they’re a car ban and should be described as such.
The move will price cars out of the reach of most working-class and many middle-class people. Actual cars will continue to increase in price to meet these standards while EVs are unaffordable. Period. This is the kind of kitchen table issue that Republicans would be able to capitalize on if they weren’t in a state of dysfunction.
Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is expected to announce the proposed limits on tailpipe emissions on Wednesday in Detroit. The requirements would be intended to ensure that electric cars represent between 54 and 60 percent of all new cars sold in the United States by 2030, with that figure rising to 64 to 67 percent of new car sales by 2032, according to the people familiar with the details, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information had not been made public.
These are not emissions standards. They’re meant to give people no choice but to be carless or buy electric cars. They’re betting that public outrage can be directed to demanding massive industry subsidies. Or that the public will learn to live without affordable personal transportation vehicles.
The proposed rule would not mandate that electric vehicles make up a certain number or percentage of sales. Instead, it would require that automakers make sure the total number of vehicles they sell each year did not exceed a certain emissions limit. That limit would be so strict that it would force carmakers to ensure that two thirds of the vehicles they sold were all-electric by 2032, according to the people familiar with the matter.
The used car market will heat up even further and expect cars to be smuggled across the border, if this happens.
In a statement released Friday night, Maria Michalos, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., did not confirm the new targets but said the agency was working on new standards as directed by the president to “accelerate the transition to a zero-emissions transportation future, protecting people and the planet.”
This whole thing is vastly outside the EPA’s powers so expect a major judicial battle as well.
At this point, the Republican judiciary is functioning better than its electoral apparatus and that dysfunction seems likely to continue through 2024 and beyond. That means Americans have little to count on except some state governments and conservative judges to hold the line. And yet a car ban is so massive and comprehensive a policy that any halfway competent politician ought to be able to run on it.
It also ought to go without saying that this means the end of the American car industry.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is
an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and
Islamic terrorism.
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-moves-to-ban-cars/
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