The Ford backed lobby group known as the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (AAI) has long supported efforts to end several pieces of existing legislation, including those aimed at nixing various electric-vehicle related mandates. Late last month, AAI sent a letter to Congress asking it to repeal the waiver granted to California by the EPA, which would impact 11 other states that have adopted its stricter emissions rules, claiming that those mandates would mean that automakers will be “forced to substantially reduce the number of overall vehicles for sale to inflate their proportion of electric vehicles sales.” Now, that same Ford backed group is celebrating a move by the U.S. Senate to do precisely that.
“The fact is these EV sales mandates were never achievable. Automakers warned federal and state policymakers that reaching these EV sales targets would take a miracle, especially in the coming years when the mandates get exponentially tougher,” said John Bozzella, president and CEO Alliance for Automotive Innovation. “There’s a significant gap between the marketplace and these EV sales requirements. In reality, meeting the mandates would require diverting finite capital from the EV transition to purchase compliance credits from Tesla. This doesn’t help EV adoption or build charging infrastructure but does create a domino effect leading to job and manufacturing losses, higher auto prices and fewer vehicle choices.”
“By the way, the problem really isn’t California. It’s the 11 states that adopted California’s rules without the same level of readiness for EV sales requirements of this magnitude. The Senate (and the House before it) deserve enormous credit. Instead of kicking the can down the road or waiting for regulatory failure and its consequences, they voted to restore a degree of balance to U.S. vehicle emissions regulations.”
“The auto industry has invested billions in electrification and has 144 electrified models on the market right now. Again, the concerns were about the mandate – not the technology. You can be against the ACC II EV mandates (we were) and believe that transportation is trending toward a range of electrified products like battery electric vehicles, hybrids and plug-in hybrids (it is). That’s what balance looks like. And balance is not only good for consumers, but essential for the U.S. auto industry to remain healthy and globally competitive.”
Regardless, these sorts of mandates have never seemingly worried Ford CEO Jim Farley, who previously stated that “even the most radical, decarbonizing politician can’t afford to be on the wrong side of the customers.”
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