The auto industry is backing away from electric vehicles in favor of hybrid options, signaling further defeats for the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to force electric vehicle sales on American buyers.
Ford announced last week that the auto giant is changing its electric vehicle strategy and backing away from its all-electric three-row SUV, opting instead to build hybrids for its next three-row SUV rollout.
“Our focus here is to reshape Ford into a higher-growth, higher-margin, more capital-efficient, more sustainable company, and that means these vehicles have to be profitable,” John Lawler, Ford’s vice president and chief financial officer, said in a media call Wednesday morning. “And if they’re not profitable, based on where the customer is in the market, we’re going to pivot and adjust and make those tough decisions.”
The announcement is a blow to left-wing electric vehicle initiatives, many of which Harris has promoted over the past three and a half years as vice president.
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Ford’s announcement is another defeat for the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to force electric vehicle sales on American buyers. (Kenny Holston-Ball/Getty Images)
“It is abundantly clear that the federal government’s push to shove electric cars down everyone’s throats is undesirable and impractical. The mandates imposed on Americans under Biden-Harris will dismantle what remains of Michigan’s manufacturing base, destroy American jobs, and make us even more dependent on Communist China,” Tom Barrett, a Republican congressional candidate in Michigan, told Fox News Digital in response to the Dearborn-based Ford move last week. “In Congress, I will continue my fight to protect consumers’ rights to buy the vehicle that best meets their needs and family budget, not the social engineering agenda of Washington bureaucrats.”
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Fox News Digital examined Harris’s record and involvement in electric vehicle pushes and programs during her time as vice president, and found that the Democrat has had a heavy hand in promoting an end to traditional gas-powered vehicles. Harris rose to the forefront of the Democratic presidential ticket last month after President Biden dropped out of the race amid growing concerns about his mental acuity at age 81.
Returning to her Senate career, Harris was one of the original signatories of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., the 2019 Green New Deal legislation, which set out a blueprint for transitioning the nation to 100 percent “clean energy” by 2040. The measure failed in the Senate.
Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden on the campaign trail together. (Getty Images)
After Biden-Harris won the 2020 election, Harris continued to lead climate change initiatives, most notably taking charge of the Clean School Bus Program. The EPA-backed program was created nearly three years ago as a provision of the Biden administration’s 2021 infrastructure bill, which allocated $5 billion for the program. Since then, the EPA has awarded $1 billion in grants to help deliver nearly 2,500 electric school buses to school districts across the country.
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Harris and EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan were described by the federal government as the program’s point people, but it only delivered 60 battery-electric or low-emission propane-fueled school buses, The free beacon has finally been reported. month.
“Every school day, 25 million children ride our nation’s largest form of mass transit: the school bus. The vast majority of these buses run on diesel, exposing students, teachers, and bus drivers to toxic air pollution,” Harris said of the program earlier this year. “Today, we’re announcing nearly $1 billion in funding for clean school buses across the country. As part of our work to address the climate crisis, the historic funding we’re announcing today is an investment in our children, their health, and their education. It also strengthens our economy by investing in American manufacturing and the American workforce.”
Harris found herself in a viral moment in 2022, when she visited a Seattle school to promote the program and spoke passionately about her love for yellow school buses. (Live image from Fox News Digital)
Amid the bus plan’s rollout, Harris found herself in a viral moment in 2022, when she visited a Seattle school to promote the program and ranted about her love for yellow school buses — comments that were later mocked on social media.
“Who doesn’t love a yellow school bus, right? Can you raise your hand if you love a yellow school bus? A lot of us went to school on a yellow school bus, right? It’s part of our experience growing up. It’s part of the nostalgia, the excitement and the fun of going to school to be with your favorite teacher, to be with your best friends and to learn,” Harris said in his scattered remarks.
Critics quickly responded that Democrats “can’t really allow this.” [Harris] “Speak out about anything.”
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“The Democrats were hiding Kamala, but she just held a press conference and talked about yellow school buses, and oh my god they can’t let her speak publicly about anything,” OutKick founder Clay Travis posted on X at the time.
“Selina Meyer,” tweeted The Federalist author Eddie Scarry, referring to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ character in the HBO comedy “Veep.”
“Find someone who loves you as much as Kamala Harris loves Venn diagrams and yellow school buses,” tweeted Republican activist Matthew Foldi.
As CNN contributor Mary Kathryn Hamm joked, “Please sing Wheels on the Bus, please sing Wheels on the Bus.”
In fact, Harris was caught on camera awkwardly singing “The wheels on the bus go round and round” in another viral moment.
Harris was also tasked with helping lead the Electric Vehicle Charging Action Plan in December 2021, to ensure that 50% of car sales are electric by 2030. The Biden-Harris administration also took action against the plan this year with one of the most significant climate regulations in U.S. history — it would force half of all new cars and trucks sold in 2030 to be electric.
“Together, we have made historic progress. Hundreds of new, expanded factories across the country. Hundreds of billions in private investment and thousands of good-paying union jobs. And we will meet my 2030 goal and move forward in the years ahead,” Biden said of the plan in March.
The $7.5 billion federal program, which was part of the 2021 infrastructure bill, aims to install half a million electric vehicle charging stations across the country, but it had only produced eight federal charging stations as of May.
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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took issue with the lack of charging stations in May on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” when host Margaret Brennan questioned him about why only eight stations had been installed.
“Now, to make a charger, it’s more than just plugging a small device into the ground,” the minister said. “There’s utility work, and that’s also a new category of federal investment. But we’re working with every one of the 50 states.”
“Seven or eight, though?” Brennan said with a laugh.
“Again, by 2030, we will have 500,000 chargers,” Buttigieg said. “And the first batch of chargers is actually being manufactured now.”
Electric vehicle plugged into a charging station. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutson)
Auto industry leaders have long argued that the push by Democrats — most notably the Biden-Harris administration — for electric vehicles was rolled out too quickly and is likely to fail.
“The problem with the whole electric vehicle movement is that there was a tremendous amount of hype behind it, largely from what I like to call the liberal mainstream media, making it seem like the next car for everyone was going to be an electric car,” former Ford, Chrysler and GM CEO Bob Lutz told Fox Digital in April. “And of course, the government was pushing it, because of their climate change policies. And it’s clear that’s not going to happen.”
“Yes, it came too soon and too quickly,” he added.
Earlier this year, data found that electric vehicles were eating into Ford’s profit margin. The company’s Model E, the company’s electric vehicle division, posted a net loss of $4.7 billion last year — including $1.6 billion in the last quarter — and Ford CFO John Lawler explained during the company’s earnings call in February that both “the quarter and the year were impacted by challenging market dynamics and investments in next-generation vehicles.”
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President Biden participates in a test run before the start of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19, 2024, in Chicago. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Ford, the country’s second-largest electric-vehicle brand after Tesla, said last week when it announced its shift in electric-vehicle strategy that it would face a $400 million writedown on “certain product-specific manufacturing assets” to eliminate the electric SUV.
Fox News Digital reached out to Ford Sunday for additional comment on its future with electric vehicles, but did not immediately receive a response.
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As Democrats continue to push for electric vehicle sales, former President Trump has vowed to end the Biden administration’s “mandate” to boost electric vehicle sales.
Former President Trump laughs as he answers a reporter’s question following his remarks on Aug. 20, 2024, at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in Howell, Michigan. (Nick Antaya/Getty Images)
“I would end the electric vehicle mandate on day one,” he said at the Republican National Committee in Milwaukee last month. “Thus saving the American auto industry from being completely destroyed, which is happening now, and saving American customers thousands and thousands of dollars per car.”
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Trump again discussed electric vehicles in his interview with Tesla founder Elon Musk earlier this month. Musk’s Tesla is the nation’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer. Trump said Musk’s cars were “unbelievable,” but that fossil fuels were deeply intertwined even with building electric vehicles and that the United States needed to “drill, baby, drill.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on the status of electric vehicles a few days after she accepted the Democratic nomination, but did not immediately receive a response.
Fox News’s Kristen Altus and Eric Revell contributed to this report.
Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more on the Fox News Digital Elections Center.
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