Hooray for electric vehicles. Someday, they’re going to help slash carbon emissions and get global warming under control.
Getting there, however, is not likely to be an effortless glide on gleaming blacktop. This is going to be a bumpy road, and the faster we go, the bumpier it’s going to get. Get ready to surround yourself with airbags. And get a helmet, maybe.
The Biden administration plans to tighten car-pollution standards in a way that's meant to dramatically speed the adoption of electric vehicles, or EVs. On April 12, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new rules that would cut the allowable pollution from cars by more than half by 2032. The amount of pollution a car produces is directly related to the amount of fuel it burns. Since there's no way to boost the fuel efficiency of gas-powered cars by that much, the new rules will effectively force automakers to build way more EVs, and way fewer gas-powered cars, in order to comply.
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The goal is laudable. The implementation, however, could be a multi-car pileup. The Biden administration is basically proposing the forced adoption of new technology on a scale unprecedented in the auto industry. The government has been tightening fuel-economy standards since the 1970s, but that has largely been a gradual process. Even then, unintended consequences have caused unforeseen problems.
The adoption of federal mileage requirements in the 1970s, in response to the Middle East oil shocks, was supposed to force automakers to build more efficient cars that burned less gas. That did happen. But other things happened that weren’t supposed to. For one, automakers began to build more vehicles that qualified as “light trucks” rather than passenger cars, because those were subject to looser efficiency rules. That’s how the roads ended up clogged with giant SUVs that get worse mileage than many cars from the 1970s. While trying to drive efficiency, the government inadvertently created an incentive to make bigger vehicles, as well.
To make care more efficient, automakers made them lighter. That made them less survivable in crashes and probably caused more highway deaths. Economists also discovered something they dubbed the “rebound effect,” in which drivers saving money from more-efficient cars end up driving more, with their cars therefore emitting more. Some two- or multi-car families that own one efficient car even buy a gas-guzzler as a kind of treat for themselves, figuring they’re already doing their share by owning the fuel-sipper.
What could the unintended consequences of hyperactive EV adoption be? There are a couple of obvious guesses. One is that charging networks won’t keep up with demand. There’s already a shortage of charging stations outside the big coastal cities, plus even the fastest charging can take 20 to 30 minutes. Who wants to be fifth in line for the only supercharger available between St. Louis and Denver?
There could also be shortages of minerals needed for EV batteries, such as cobalt, lithium, manganese, and nickel. Even if this doesn’t cause a shortage of vehicles, it could push prices up.
"If this rate of EV market share requirement is implemented, within the proposed time frame, it will impact every aspect of the auto industry in the form of lost jobs and dramatic price hikes for both EVs and gasoline models," Karl Brauer, executive analyst of iSeeCars, said in a statement. "These increases will either drive the price of new vehicles beyond the average American’s budget or put multiple global automakers in financial peril."
Some automakers are likely to fight the new rules, which means they could end up less stringent once finalized. There could also be lawsuits charging that the government is overstepping its authority, with an act of Congress required to make such a dramatic change in the way the federal government regulates cars.
EVs may not even be the ultimate climate solution. Since they charge from the electrical grid, they’re only “clean” if the energy used to produce the electricity is also clean. Right now, about 22% of all electricity in the United States comes from renewables and that is forecast to rise steadily—but not to 100% any time soon. The same permitting barriers that block oil and gas pipelines stand in the way of new high-voltage transmission lines and other types of green energy infrastructure. It’s possible hydrogen fuel cells or some other technology will be a better solution in the long run, and we’ll need yet another fueling infrastructure.
Then there’s the possibility—perhaps likelihood—that a future presidential administration will reverse Biden’s moves. That’s been happening for a decade. President Obama tried to ramp up fuel-economy rules, then President Trump reversed the Obama moves, then Biden reversed the Trump moves and went further than Obama. Will the next president keep the green-energy revolution on cruise control or shift gears?
As turbulent as the green-energy transition is likely to be, there are some trusty ground rules for consumers. If you rely on one car and occasionally make long trips, you should either hold off buying an EV or make sure there are plenty of chargers wherever you’re likely to go. If you have more than one car and one of them is a commuter, an EV might be a great choice, if you can charge at home and are unlikely to need the electric for a road trip. If you want to be part of the revolution and don’t mind being inconvenienced, then get an EV and always keep some engaging reading material in your car, in case charge-ups go long.
Finally, nobody should feel left out or guilt-ridden for holding onto that dear old gas-powered car or buying one in the future. Internal-combustion vehicles are reliable, terrifically convenient, and cheap if you shop prudently. You can buy just as much horsepower as you need—no more—and mature supply chains probably mean you won’t be unwittingly paying for blood minerals. In fact, if you can keep a gas-powered car in the stable until the green-energy revolution is over, you probably won’t regret it.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @rickjnewman
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