Biden proposes $174 billion investment in electric vehiclesFred...

Biden proposes $174 billion investment in electric vehicles
Fred Lambert- Mar. 31st 2021 10:39 am ET

President Joe Biden has unveiled an outline of his infrastructure plan, and it includes a proposed $174 billion investment in electric vehicles.

The Biden administration has released an outline of its infrastructure plan on its website.

It includes a $174 billion investment in electric vehicles that they summarized:

“Create good jobs electrifying vehicles. U.S. market share of plug-in electric vehicle (EV) sales is only one-third the size of the Chinese EV market. The President believes that must change. He is proposing a $174 billion investment to win the EV market. His plan will enable automakers to spur domestic supply chains from raw materials to parts, retool factories to compete globally, and support American workers to make batteries and EVs. It will give consumers point of sale rebates and tax incentives to buy American-made EVs, while ensuring that these vehicles are affordable for all families and manufactured by workers with good jobs. It will establish grant and incentive programs for state and local governments and the private sector to build a national network of 500,000 EV chargers by 2030, while promoting strong labor, training, and installation standards. His plan also will replace 50,000 diesel transit vehicles and electrify at least 20 percent of our yellow school bus fleet through a new Clean Buses for Kids Program at the Environmental Protection Agency, with support from the Department of Energy. These investments will set us on a path to 100 percent clean buses, while ensuring that the American workforce is trained to operate and maintain this 21st century infrastructure. Finally, it will utilize the vast tools of federal procurement to electrify the federal fleet, including the United States Postal Service.”

Without going into details, the investment will include funds to help automakers secure materials for electric vehicle production and converting factories.

The announcement confirms that the initiative will also revamp the consumer incentive to buy electric vehicles.

Again without going into the details, we do have a confirmation that it will not only be a tax credit, but it will also be available at the point of sale, which is going to facilitate sales.

The summary also confirms that this incentive is only going to be for “American-made” electric vehicles.

Recently, Democrats have introduced several new legislations to reform the EV tax incentives and one of them, the GREEN act, included a point-of-sales aspect.

The announcement also confirms that part of the $174 billion investment will go toward charging infrastructure and electric mass transit vehicles, like school buses.

Electrek’s Take

Before all the free market capitalists decide to get into the comments to say that government shouldn’t subsidize anything, you have to remember that the free market doesn’t account for the impact of emissions on the environment, air and water.

These emissions have a real financial cost that the free markets don’t account for.

It would be fairer to implement a carbon tax to account for that cost than put in place those incentives for clean technology, but it somehow even more difficult to do politically.

Funny enough, most often the same free market people who are against those incentives are also against a carbon tax, which actually aims to make the free market fair.

For now, this is the best we got and it should be enough to significantly accelerate EV adoption in the US.

https://electrek.co/2021/03/31/biden-proposes-174-billion-investment-electric-vehicles/