Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign recently walked back Harris's position on EV mandates, stating she "does not support an electric vehicle mandate." But the campaign is now shying away from questions about whether Harris would sign or veto legislation she personally cosponsored in the Senate that would implement a nationwide EV mandate.
The campaign on Wednesday ignored several questions from the Washington Free Beacon asking for it to clarify Harris's position on EV mandates. That came one day after a Harris campaign official declined to comment late Tuesday to Axios on whether she would even sign the so-called Zero-Emission Vehicles Act that she helped craft in 2019, creating the appearance that the Democratic candidate for president is running from the issue.
The Harris campaign's refusal to state a positive policy position—instead, clarifying what her position is not—makes EV mandates the latest issue on which Harris has essentially done a U-turn.
Since ascending to the top of the Democratic ticket in July, Harris has deserted a number of significant policy positions she championed, including support for a fracking ban, support for universal health care, support for certain mandatory gun buy-back programs, and opposition to building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to stem the influx of illegal immigrants.
"Well, let’s be clear. My values have not changed," Harris explained when asked about her evolving positions in an interview last week with CNN.
But her flip-flops on the EV mandate are particularly notable, considering that she had, for years, established herself as one of the leading proponents of such a policy.
Months after she announced in January 2019 that she would run for president, Harris cosponsored the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act, a bill that was later modified to include language mandating that 43 percent of car sales be electric by 2027 and 100 percent be electric by 2035. That language closely aligns with the language the state of California and other Democratic-led states have codified mandating EVs.
Harris also vowed during the campaign to implement climate policies ensuring 50 percent of all new passenger vehicles sold are EVs by 2030 and 100 percent are EVs by 2035, an archived version of her campaign website shows. She also backed a mandate requiring all new vehicle purchases for corporate fleets, transportation networks, and heavy-duty vehicles be electric by 2030, a policy that would be, by far, the most aggressive of its kind worldwide.
Energy experts, though, have warned that the United States economy is not prepared to adopt such mandates, noting the vast mineral resources, charging infrastructure, and power generation needed for EV manufacturing.
"We've really reached peak EV market," Jason Isaac, the CEO of the American Energy Institute, recently told the Free Beacon. "Ford and other automobile manufacturers are recognizing this, and they're going to things that people want—hybrid electrics that get longer range, that have better fuel economy, but have that convenience of having fuel charging that works in a matter of minutes."
Isaac's comments came after Ford announced it was scaling back some EV production, despite its aggressive promises to ensure all of its products are electric in the future. Other automakers have similarly backed off past EV pledges amid market uncertainty and an onslaught of financial losses across the EV sector.
Between January and March, just 9.3 percent of light-duty vehicles sold in the United States were either plug-in hybrid or battery-electric, a decline from 10.2 percent in the final quarter of 2023, according to data released in July by the auto industry association Alliance for Automotive Innovation. Battery-electric sales dropped nearly 1 percentage point year-over-year, the data showed.
Forty-four percent of Americans, meanwhile, said they would consider purchasing an EV, down from 55 percent compared with last year, according to a March poll conducted by Gallup.
While the Biden-Harris administration hasn't pursued an EV mandate since taking office in 2021, it has instead finalized environmental regulations indirectly forcing automakers to quickly scale-up EV production. President Joe Biden said those regulations would help meet his target that half of all car purchases are electric by 2030.