Harris’ Push for Electric Vehicles Suffers Another Major Blow After Automaker Backtracks

From automakers backing out of creating and selling new EVs to a lack of charging infrastructure, the inability of the government to make their plans a reality is starting to show.

“Our focus here is to remake Ford into a higher-growth, higher-margin, more capital-efficient and durable business, and that means these vehicles need to be profitable,” John Lawler, Ford vice chair and chief financial officer, said on a call with media Wednesday morning. “And if they’re not profitable, based on where the customer is in the market is, we will pivot and adjust and make those tough decisions.”

The initial mandate proposed that all cars sold in the US will be zero-emission by 2030, an incredibly audacious goal. However, many critics on both sides of the political spectrum have noted that this idea won’t work for several reasons.

He added,  “In Congress, I will continue my fight to protect the rights of consumers to purchase the vehicle that meet their needs and their family’s budget, not the social engineering agenda of bureaucrats in Washington.”

The bill sought to establish a blueprint to shift the nation to using 100% “clean energy” by 2040. The measure failed to pass through the senate.

Experts have said that to cool the climate and stop rising ocean levels and excessive heat, big changes will need to be made in response to constant exhaust and fumes increasing the heat in the atmosphere.

One notable measure she assisted on was the Clean School Bus program, backed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which was created nearly three years ago as a provision under the Biden administration’s 2021 infrastructure bill. The bill allocated $5 million for the program to deliver nearly 2,500 electric school buses around the nation.

“Every school day, 25 million children ride our nation’s largest form of mass transit: the school bus. The vast majority of those buses run on diesel, exposing students, teachers, and bus drivers to toxic air pollution,” Harris said of the program earlier this year. “Today, we are announcing nearly $1 billion to fund clean school buses across the nation. As part of our work to tackle the climate crisis, the historic funding we are announcing today is an investment in our children, their health, and their education. It also strengthens our economy by investing in American manufacturing and America’s workforce.”

In March, Biden spoke of the plan; “Together, we’ve made historic progress. Hundreds of new expanded factories across the country. Hundreds of billions in private investment and thousands of good-paying union jobs. And we’ll meet my goal for 2030 and race forward in the years ahead.”

Part of the 2021 infrastructure bill allotted more than $7.5 billion in federal funding aimed to install half a million EV charging stations across the country. However, the federal government has only installed roughly eight stations as of May of this year.

“Now, in order to do a charger, it’s more than just plugging a small device into the ground,” the secretary said. “There’s utility work, and this is also really a new category of federal investment. But we’ve been working with each of the 50 states.” He reiterated that more than 500,000 chargers will need to be built by 2030.

The Model e, the company’s EV division, had a total net loss of $4.7 billion last year. After an initial interest in electric vehicles, sales appear to have cooled off substantially.