The US Environmental Protection Agency is about to announce tougher exhaust emission standards. Electric cars should quickly represent more than half of new vehicle sales in the United States.
The cliché of huge American pickups with their big V8 engines could well be about to be swept away by the next announcements from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). According to an article published by the New York Times, the EPA is about to announce this Wednesday, April 12, 2023 a small revolution in the automobile consumption habits of Americans. Large internal combustion engines are particularly in the sights of the agency, which wants to drastically reduce polluting emissions from the transport sector.
As for Europe, the announcements to come could upset the US automobile market, pushing for massive electrification in a few years. California has already initiated the movement with a goal of 100% electric vehicles on sale by 2030. While other states, such as Wyoming and Mississippi, are looking to put a spoke in the wheels of the electric car .
What is happening in the USA for the automobile?
Faced with the climate emergency, the Biden government wants to act in favor of the climate. The current president of the United States wants to put the country back on the right track after the reductions made during the presidency of Trump. The transition of the automotive sector is considered too slow, so, in addition to using the carrot (various aid granted by the government for electric cars), the administration is now also drawing the stick. Joe Biden had already presented a rather ambitious goal in 2021, indicating that 50% of cars sold would be electric by 2030.
What is rumored is that the requirements contained in the texts would be among the strictest in the world in terms of automobile pollution. The new EPA rules would set an emissions limit for the total number of new cars sold by each automaker in a year. A device that resembles the CAFE regulation, voted in Europe in 2014. This regulation gives an emission ceiling that manufacturers cannot exceed annually. If they exceed their quota, they are heavily penalized financially.
At first sight, this will not simply be a question of banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars or of obliging companies to sell only vehicles with electric motors. Presented in this way at the federal level, the law could be too easily rejected. This is why the EPA is presenting a text involving a system of quotas smoothed over the entire range of the manufacturer. The objective of the text seems all the same that more than 60% of new vehicles registered in 2032 are electric.
To give a point of comparison, in 2022 electric cars accounted for only 5.8% market share in the United States. France has already exceeded 13% market share for EVs. However, the share of electric vehicles has greatly increased since these models had only 2% of the market in 2020.
The electric car at the heart of the next American presidential election in 2024
If people in favor of the climate will rejoice at the announcement, the text risks raising significant opposition. The debate could even weigh in the next presidential election of 2024 in the USA.
In its article, the New York Times nevertheless wonders about the real capacities of the country to be able to ensure this transition. The charging network is still in its infancy in this vast territory. Employment is also a major concern in the country, whose automotive sector has already been hard hit by past crises. Finally, the production capacities of electric cars are far from being able to meet such demand. More than 1 million vehicles are sold every month in the United States. The fear of seeing Chinese cars invade their national market does not please the Biden administration, which absolutely wants to encourage local production, but will it be able to keep up? Nothing is less sure.
After China and Europe, it is normal to see the United States accelerating its transition to 100% electric. On the other hand, the subject promises to be particularly hot in a country where the car is almost as sacred as firearms.
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