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Automotive

‘Save Our Cars’ Is A Winning Campaign Message In An Age Of EV Mandates

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By KEVIN MOONEY

 

Automobile consumers who treasure the open roads during the summertime could upend the presidential campaign and U.S. Senate races in surprising places if public opposition to electric-vehicle mandates and other regulations continues to rise.

That is what some recent polls suggest and it certainly helps to explain why the Biden administration is poised to artificially reduce fuel prices by selling one million barrels of gasoline from an energy reserve in New England timed with the summer driving season and in anticipation of the November elections.

Since the East Coast consumed in excess of three million barrels a day of gasoline last June, it is not evident that having an additional one million barrels on the market will make an appreciable difference.

Moreover, there is an argument to be made that by tapping into the reserve Team Biden is leaving the region open to cyberattacks that would disrupt energy supplies. (Recall, that is precisely what happened throughout the southeast in 2021 when a ransomware attack hit the Colonial Pipeline.)

But even in the absence of any cyber drama, the cumulative effect of President Joe Biden’s anti-energy agenda is already registering with consumers who benefit from affordable, reliable energy. This is particularly true where conventional, gas-powered cars are concerned.

On holiday weekends, cars erase differences, bring families together and improve the quality of life. The American Automobile Association (AAA) predicts almost 50 million people will travel 50 miles or more from their homes to celebrate Independence Day over the weekend of June 30 to July 4.

This would represent an increase of 3.7% from 2021 bringing travel volumes to where they were prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019. This increase will be particularly acute with AAA expecting 42 million Americans to hit the roads this coming Independence Day.

But what about those EV mandates?

President Biden and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat, remain undeterred by the paucity of charging stations, the limited range of EV’s, their exorbitant costs, and the vulnerability of foreign supply chains leading back to China as they press ahead with new regulatory initiatives. Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency finalized a tailpipe emissions rule in March aimed at coercing automakers into selling more EVs while the California Air Resources Board is pressing ahead with a “zero emissions” rule the board approved last year to meet Newsom’s stated climate goals.

California is clearly working hand in glove with the Biden administration to achieve zero emissions goals for vehicles by 2035. This effort will most certainly limit consumer choice and raise costs.

Despite all the subsidies and regulatory schemes developed to favor EV’s, they represent only about 1% of the 290 million vehicles in the U.S. today. Meanwhile EV costs continue to soar.

Recent studies also show that EVs, on average, are more expensive to own and operate than their gas-powered counterparts. So how should consumers respond to the regulatory onslaught?

Enter the “Save Our Cars Coalition,” which includes 31 national and state organizations devoted to preserving the ability of consumers to select the vehicles most suitable to their needs.

Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, a coalition member that favors free market energy policies, views cars as an integral component of American life. The Biden-Newsom regulations amount to what Pyle describes as “an assault on American freedom.”

“In a nation as expansive as the United States, cars are not merely vehicles, they are integral to the American way of life,” Pyle says. “They play a pivotal role in our daily lives, especially in suburban and rural settings. This modern-day prohibition would outlaw a product and a value–in this case, gasoline-powered cars and trucks that have created personal mobility on an unprecedented scale – that it cannot persuade people to forego themselves.”

The coalition is perfectly positioned to make EV mandates a campaign issue in areas where the affordability of cars capable of traversing long distances without frequent stops is very much on the minds of voters. State officials who continue to double-down on California-type regulations will only serve to bolster the coalition’s arguments.

By contrast, states that break free from California’s emissions standards could become surprisingly competitive in the presidential race. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, recently announced that he would end California’s EV mandate in his state by the end of this year. Although Virginia hasn’t backed a Republican for president since George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004, polls show Biden and  Donald Trump are in a dead heat. The former, and perhaps future Republican president, is on record opposing Biden’s EV mandates.

By contrast, Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, a Democrat elected in 2017 and re-elected in 2021, is moving full speed ahead with a California-type mandate requiring all new car sales to be electric by 2035. Polls show Murphy’s Jersey constituents are not keen on the policy change. In fact, more than half of state residents say they are not inclined to buy an electric car even with the mandates.

New Jersey has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since George Bush Sr. won the state in 1988. But fresh polls show Biden leading Trump by just seven points in the Garden State. It is worth noting that New Jersey has a large block of unaffiliated voters that can be pliable in tight races such as the most recent gubernatorial campaign.

Murphy almost lost his re-election bid to Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a former assemblyman and businessman, who came within a few percentage points of pulling off an upset. Trump’s campaign rally in Wildwood, N.J., that attracted more than 100,000 people could also serve as a barometer for a potentially close election. A beach resort community, Wildwood is practically inaccessible without the kind of vehicles Biden and Newsom are attempting to ban.

The big prize though may be Pennsylvania where Trump is leading Biden in recent polls. There is also a competitive U.S. Senate race in that state between Sen. Robert Casey Jr., the Democratic incumbent, and Dave McCormick, the Republican challenger.

Polls show Casey is only ahead by six points. So far, Casey has been ducking and avoiding any questions about his position on EV mandates. With Trump already leading, and McCormick gaining in the Keystone State, anyone running on a platform of “Save Our Cars” could have a field day.

Kevin Mooney is the Senior Investigative Reporter at the Commonwealth Foundation’s free-market think tank and writes for several national publications. Twitter: @KevinMooneyDC

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Automotive

Power Struggle: Electric vehicles and reality

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From Resource Works

Tension grows between ambition and market truths

Host Stewart Muir talks on Power Struggle with Brian Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Association, and Maas introduces us to a U.S. problem that Canada and B.C. also face right now. “The problem is there are mandates that apply in California and 11 other states that require, for the 2026 model year, 35% of all vehicles manufactured for sale in our state must be zero-emission, even though the market share right now is 20%.  “So we’ve got a mandate that virtually none of the manufacturers our dealers represent are going to be able to meet.”

Maas adds: “We’re trying to communicate with policymakers that nobody’s opposed to the eventual goal of electrification. California’s obviously led that effort, but a mandate that nobody can comply with and one that California voters are opposed to deserves to be recalibrated.” Meanwhile, in Canada, the same objections apply to the federal government’s requirement, set in 2023, that 100% of new light-duty vehicles sold must be zero-emission vehicles, ZEVs (electric or plug-in hybrid) by 2035, with interim targets of 20 per cent by 2026 and 60 per cent by 2030. There are hefty penalties for dealers missing the targets.

Market researchers note that it now takes 55 days to sell an electric vehicle in Canada, up from 22 days in the first quarter of 2023. The researchers cite a lack of desirable models and high consumer prices despite government subsidies to buyers in six provinces that run as high as $7,000 in Quebec.

In the U.S. The Wall Street Journal reports that, on average, electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids sit in dealer lots longer than gasoline-powered cars and hybrids, despite government pressure to switch to electric. (The Biden administration ruled that two-thirds of new vehicles sold must be electric by 2032.) For Canada, the small-c conservative Fraser Institute reports: “The targets were wild to begin with. As Manhattan Institute senior fellow Mark P. Mills observed, bans on conventional vehicles and mandated switches to electric means, consumers will need to adopt EVs at a scale and velocity 10 times greater and faster than the introduction of any new model of car in history.”

When Ottawa scrapped federal consumer subsidies earlier this year, EV manufacturers and dealers in Canada called on the feds to scrap the sales mandates. “The federal government’s mandated ZEV sales targets are increasingly unrealistic and must end,” said Brian Kingston, CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association. “Mandating Canadians to buy ZEVs without providing them the supports needed to switch to electric is a made-in-Canada policy failure.” And Tim Reuss, CEO of the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association, said: “The Liberal federal government has backed away from supporting the transition to electric vehicles and now we are left with a completely unrealistic plan at the federal level.  “There is hypocrisy in imposing ambitious ZEV mandates and penalties on consumers when the government is showing a clear lack of motivation and support for their own policy goals.”

In B.C., sales growth of ZEVs has recently slowed, and the provincial government is considering easing its ZEV targets. “The Energy Ministry acknowledged that it will be ‘challenging’ to reach the target that 90 per cent of new vehicles be zero emission by 2030.”  Nat Gosman, an assistant deputy minister in the B.C. energy ministry, cited reasons for the slowdown that include affordability concerns due to a pause in government rebates, supply chain disruptions caused by U.S. tariffs, and concerns about reliability of public charging sites.

Barry Penner, chair of the Energy Futures Institute and a former B.C. Liberal environment minister, said the problem is that the government has “put the cart before the horse” when it comes to incentivizing people to buy electric vehicles. “The government imposed these electric vehicle mandates before the public charging infrastructure is in place and before we’ve figured out how we’re going to make it easy for people to charge their vehicles in multi-family dwellings like apartment buildings.”

Penner went on to write an article for Resource Works that said: “Instead of accelerating into economically harmful mandates, both provincial and federal governments should recalibrate. We need to slow down, invest in required charging infrastructure, and support market-based innovation, not forced adoption through penalties. “A sustainable energy future for BC and Canada requires smart, pragmatic policy, not economic coercion. Let’s take our foot off the gas and realign our policies with reality, protect jobs, consumer affordability, and real environmental progress. Then we can have a successful transition to electric vehicles.”

Back to Power Struggle, and Brian Maas tells Stewart: “I think everybody understands that it’s great technology and I think a lot of Californians would like to have one.  . . . The number one reason consumers cited for not making the transition to a zero-emission vehicle is the lack of public charging infrastructure. We’re woefully behind what would be required to move to 100% environment. “And if you live in a multifamily dwelling, an apartment building or something like that, you can’t charge at home, so you would have to rely on a public charger. Where do you go to get that charged?

“The state’s Energy Commission has said we need a million public chargers by 2030 and two million public chargers by 2035. We only have 178,000 now and we’re adding less than 50,000 public chargers a year. We’re just not going to get there fast enough to meet the mandate that’s on the books now.”

In Canada, Resource Works finds there now are more than 33,700 public charging ports, at 12,955 locations. But Ottawa says that to support its EV mandate, Canada will need about 679,000 public ports. “This will require the installation of, on average, 40,000 public ports each year between 2025 and 2040.”

And we remind readers of Penner’s serious call on governments to lighten the push on the accelerator when it comes to ZEV mandates: “Let’s take our foot off the gas and realign our policies with reality, protect jobs, consumer affordability, and real environmental progress. Then we can have a successful transition to electric vehicles.”

  • Power Struggle YouTube video: https://ow.ly/8J4T50WhK5i
  • Audio and full transcript: https://ow.ly/Np8550WhK5j
  • Stewart Muir on LinkedIn: https://ow.ly/Smiq50UWpSB
  • Brian Maas on LinkedIn: https://ow.ly/GuTh50WhK8h
  • Power Struggle on LinkedIn: https://ow.ly/KX4r50UWpUa
  • Power Struggle on Instagram: https://ow.ly/3VIM50UWpUg
  • Power Struggle on Facebook: https://ow.ly/4znx50UWpUs
  • Power Struggle on X: https://ow.ly/tU3R50UWpVu
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Automotive

Electric vehicle sales are falling hard in BC, and it is time to recognize reality.

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From Energy Now

By Barry Penner

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British Columbia’s electric vehicle (EV) sales mandates were created with good intentions, but the collision with reality is now obvious.

Although we are still in 2025, the 26 percent zero-emission vehicle sales mandate is already hitting our dealerships. That’s because it applies to the 2026 model year, and many of those models are starting to arrive across the province now.

While 26 percent sounds moderate compared to 90 percent by 2030, or 100 percent by 2035, as also required by BC law, the facts on the ground are grim.

According to S&P Global Mobility data, EV sales in BC have plummeted to around 15.4 percent as of June 2025, down from nearly 25 percent in mid-2024. This decline happened fast after both federal, up to $5,000, and provincial governments, up to $4,000 in BC, stopped funding their EV rebate programs earlier this year. So, the very incentives that made expensive electric vehicles accessible to middle-income buyers disappeared just when they were needed most.

Government polling shows 60 percent of British Columbians say cost is their biggest barrier to buying electric vehicles. And yet, both levels of government pulled the financial support while maintaining the sales mandates, with penalties of up to $20,000 per non-compliant vehicle. This is not just bad policy, it’s economic punishment for our auto sector.

Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, pointed out the severe consequences for automakers. Federally, failing to meet the EV sales targets could mean astronomical penalties. A company selling 300,000 vehicles a year that misses its target by 10 percent could face a $600 million fine. These are not theoretical risks; they are real and could mean manufacturers reduce their Canadian presence, potentially costing thousands of auto jobs.

And powering an all-electric vehicle fleet is no small task. The organization of which I am chair, the Energy Futures Institute, modelled BC’s electricity needs under the 2035 mandate scenario and found full implementation would require an extra two Site C dams’ worth of electricity. We’ve already been importing 20 to 25 percent of our electricity annually for the past few years, often from fossil fuels, which contradicts our clean energy goals.

Electric vehicles represent an important technological advance, but the path matters. With governments forcing unattainable mandates, they are creating resentment amongst potential buyers and a political backlash against EVs themselves.

Energy Futures recently learned that the BC government is undertaking a technical review of the Zero-Emission Vehicle Act, quietly acknowledging that sales targets are increasingly seen as next to impossible. Under consideration is a change to the targets themselves, along with adjustments to compliance ratios and eligibility rules for plug-in hybrids.

The market shift to regular hybrids, which you don’t plug in, is not supported by rebates, but is happening nevertheless. However, these vehicles, such as the Toyota Prius, are not considered “clean” enough under BC legislation and could attract a penalty of $20,000 each.

This only makes things worse for consumers who are already stretched. Punitive mandates create market distortions, restrict consumer choice, and drive up vehicle prices for everyone, especially lower-income families who rely on affordable used cars.

Instead of accelerating into economically harmful mandates, both provincial and federal governments should recalibrate. Ottawa’s Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin’s statement earlier this month to renew consumer rebates is a good start, if the government is determined to interfere with the marketplace. But rebates alone won’t be enough. We need to slow down, invest in required charging infrastructure, and support market-based innovation, not forced adoption through penalties.

A sustainable energy future for BC and Canada requires smart, pragmatic policy, not economic coercion. Let’s take our foot off the gas and realign our policies with reality, protect jobs, consumer affordability, and real environmental progress. Then we can have a successful transition to electric vehicles.


Barry Penner is chair of the Energy Futures Institute, former president of the Pacific Northwest Economic Region and former four-term B.C. MLA and cabinet minister.

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