The EPA Blunders On

 William Levin has an article today at the American Thinker entitled The EPA's War Against Cars that points out the dire need to rein in the various Federal executive agencies and of course overturn the SCOTUS ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resource Defense Council The ruling established that courts should defer to Federal agencies interpretations when the law was vague. But things have gotten out of hand, and the current push for Electric Vehicles shows why.

Americans justly love cars, for necessity, for pleasure, and everything in between. In all we drive more than three trillion miles per year, in 290 million registered cars, of which some 287 million are internal combustion engines. Today’s cars are without doubt among the most highly evolved, reliable, innovative and efficient forms of production ever witnessed. Exactly the prime target you would expect from the Biden administration.

The EPA has announced planned emission regulations that will end the U.S. automotive industry as we know it, while simultaneously forcing Americans into EV cars they manifestly do not want. The proposed regulations are being called “the single most important regulatory initiative by the Biden administration.” That claim alone should strike fear into every American household.

The EPA states that cars currently emit an average of 400 grams of CO2 per mile. The proposed regulations would reduce allowable CO2 emissions to 82g/mile by 2032. By the EPA’s own calculation, the only way to meet this standard is for U.S. auto companies to sell at least 67% of the entire fleet as electric vehicles. In sharpest contrast, electric car booster IEA forecasts that EV sales will account for a mere 20% of U.S. cars sales in 2030. And even that estimate is looking too optimistic based on recent events.

EV sales currently account for about 8% of U.S. new car sales, or less than 5% excluding California, even with mammoth subsidies of $7,500 per car, billions in incentives and tax credits to manufacturers to support lower sticker prices. Yet despite all, EVs are not selling as planned, as evidenced by excess inventories. With price cuts the Big Three are losing money on EVs hand over fist. Even Tesla, the only manufacturer other than Chinese BYD that can make sustainable profits on EVs, has seen its stock decline in the past two months by $240 billion, as investors recalibrate.

The reality that EVs are unwanted in mass numbers, too expensive and oversupplied is beginning to set in.

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In October 2023, the bandwagon took its first real hit from reality. GM pulled its guidance to build 600,000 EVs in the first half of 2024 and withdrew from a joint venture to make low-cost EVs with Honda. Ford went further, abandoning its 2026 goal to build two million EVs. Automakers worldwide are seeing EVs sell well below cost, even with subsidies, calling the EV landscape “brutal.”

Gentle readers can read all of Levin's article, and should. Toyota's former CEO Akio Toyoda has been vindicated. Yet the EPA blunders on with the crazy push for EVs. The EPA and other alphabet agencies are not really accountable to We The People. Oh, sure, because the President is theoretically an elected official, they are accountable to him. But as we have recently scene, too many agencies are accountable to no one, not even the Democrat party. Agencies like the EPA should be enforcement only. They should not be able to make rules as that is the Constitutional duty of Congress. Failure by Congress to make a rule should be seen not as a failure, but as a positive sign that Congress did not feel a rule was necessary. As it is, government butts into our lives too frequently.