Vice President Kamala Harris, who has emerged as the presumptive 2024 Democratic nominee for president, favors a far more aggressive plan to mandate electric vehicles than even President Joe Biden, whose EV policies have seen declining popularity both in swing states and nationwide.
During her 2020 presidential campaign, Harris vowed 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 copy 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.
Months after she announced in January 2019 that she would run for president, Harris also cosponsored the so-called Zero-Emission Vehicles Act, a bill that was later modified to include language mandating 43 percent of car sales are electric by 2027 and 100 percent are electric by 2035.
By comparison, Biden's administration has finalized multi-pollutant emission standards, which are expected to lead to 56 percent of light-duty car sales being battery-electric and another 13 percent being hybrid by 2032. Under the administration's finalized standards for heavy-duty vehicles, less than half of trucks produced in 2032 will be electric.
But Harris's plan to rapidly electrify the U.S. transportation sector—which was among the most radical plans offered by candidates in 2020—sheds light on how a possible Harris administration may approach EV-related policies and climate change more broadly. And it provides fresh material for the Trump campaign, which has already vigorously attacked Biden's EV policies, to target in the months until the election.
"Kamala Harris' radical energy policies such as her EV mandate and the Green New Scam will hurt American workers, help China, and do virtually nothing to help the environment," Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told the Washington Free Beacon in a statement.
"President Trump advanced conservation and environmental stewardship while promoting economic growth for families across the country," Leavitt continued. "America's energy agenda under President Trump produced affordable, reliable energy for consumers along with stable, high-paying jobs for small businesses—all while dropping U.S. carbon emissions to their lowest level in 25 years."
A poll conducted earlier this month by Remington Research Group on behalf of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, which opposes EV mandates, found that 59 percent or more of likely voters in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin oppose bans on gas-powered cars in their states, which will likely determine the winner of the election.
Larger majorities in those states reported that a candidate's position on stopping bans on new gas cars would be an important factor in their vote.
"This new polling underscores what we have been hearing from the American people of all political stripes for months—that they do not want the government banning gas cars, mandating electric vehicles or imposing regulations that restrict access to the types of cars that best meet a family's needs and budget," American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers president Chet Thompson said at the time.
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.
Overall, 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 earlier this month by the auto industry association Alliance for Automotive Innovation. Battery-electric sales dropped nearly 1 percentage point year-over-year, the data showed.
At the same time, major automakers—including General Motors, Ford, and Volkswagen—have also announced plans to substantially scale back EV production amid the considerable economic roadblocks facing the sector.
Automakers lose around $6,000 on every single EV they sell for $50,000, a March study conducted by Boston Consulting Group concluded. The average EV transaction price is $56,371, nearly $8,000 more than the average transaction price of gas-powered vehicles, according to the most recent Kelley Blue Book data.
The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.