A press release went out from the Republican National Committee this morning noting that 16 Republican governors, Louisiana’s Jeff Landry included, are now pushing back on the Biden administration’s dumb attempts to force the public into electric vehicles…
The letter states that the Biden Administration’s mandates are unrealistic, costly, and prescriptive solutions that harm American consumers. Additionally, the letter notes that while not opposed to the electric vehicle marketplace, the American consumer and the free market should determine the direction and timing for the industry’s growth rather than the federal government.
Here’s the letter…
January 22, 2024
President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20500Dear Mr. President,We are writing today on behalf of the American consumer to urge you to change course on your current mandate that two out of every three vehicles be battery electrics by 2032.1 Instead of using government mandates to drive the vehicle market, allow American consumers to maintain choice in the types of vehicles they choose to drive.While we are not opposed to the electric vehicle marketplace, we do have concerns with federal government mandates that penalize retailers and do not reflect the will of the consumer. Even with deep price cuts, manufacturers’ incentives, and generous government funding, federal mandates on electric vehicles are unrealistic. The American customer should be able to decide what technology makes most sense for them, not the federal government.Mandates aside, we must also ensure we have the necessary infrastructure to support battery electric vehicles, including grid capacity and reliability, charging stations, and domestic electric vehicle battery production. China currently accounts for 70% of global electric vehicle battery production capacity.2 Bolstering the domestic critical minerals industry is an essential step to realizing any long–term, responsible electric vehicle battery production. Given China’s current action atop the global electric vehicle production, mandating electric vehicle use too quickly can also present a national security risk. Additionally, just this summer, we saw the challenges associated with electric vehicles when your own Secretary of Energy, Secretary Granholm, and her staff got caught in an altercation at a charging station while attempting to reserve one of the limited charging spots for the Secretary’s electric vehicle.
There are a number of reasons why consumers are leaving these cars on dealership lots – the cost, the infrastructure required, and the battery content requirements are untenable for today’s car buyers. Even if consumers determine over time that battery electric vehicles are appealing, the reality is that the lack of a strong, domestic marketplace makes electric vehicles prohibitively expensive for the American consumer. While battery electric vehicles are a promising technology, we believe it will take time to develop the marketplace, to address consumer access and concerns, and to build out the necessary infrastructure.
Ultimately, we must continue to maintain consumer choice. Your mandates are unrealistic, costly, and prescriptive solutions that harm American consumers. Therefore, we request you remove your mandate that two out of every three vehicles be electric and instead provide a more realistic approach by allowing the free market to determine the direction and timing for the industry’s growth rather than the federal government. Let American consumers decide for themselves.
1 The United States Government. (2023, December 15). Fact sheet: Biden–Harris Administration takes action to accelerate America’s
Clean Transportation Future. The White House.
2 “U.S. Congressional Research Service. Critical Minerals in Electric Vehicle Batteries (R47227; Aug. 29, 2022), by Brandon S. Tracy.
If anything, the letter is too polite. The fact is that as a practical matter, EV technology isn’t actually promising at all. It’s going to take up entirely too much juice from the power grid, the battery technology is far too limiting, everything about EV’s is too expensive, they weigh too much and thus cause more wear and tear to the road infrastructure.
EV’s are a terrible idea which has become vogue for leftist control freaks and unintelligent virtue-signalers to trumpet. As a novelty item, for example, a Tesla is a fun departure – but as an economic sea change in the car industry, what EV’s represent is an excellent opportunity to drag Americans out of their vehicles and into public transportation.
Regular middle-class Americans with EV’s will almost certainly become carless when they’re hit with a $25,000 bill to replace the lithium battery in their vehicle. As such, it’s imperative that the EV craze being forced on us by government regulation be squashed.
There are a couple of bills being prepared for Louisiana’s upcoming regular session by Rep. Chuck Owen which would (1) limit the state’s electric-vehicle share of its motor pool to the current three percent, and (2) cap the share of state car sales to only five percent, with massive taxes and fees applied to dealers who top that number.
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The second bill is going to be quite controversial. It isn’t a particularly free market approach to the problem. But an excellent argument for it can be had – namely, that sharing the road with EV’s in the middle of a hurricane evacuation is inherently dangerous – those evacuations involve very high traffic and often very low speeds, and with EV range already problematic, having to sit for long periods at near-idle could make things even worse. Stalled EV’s blocking I-10 out of New Orleans with a hurricane approaching is a recipe for disaster.
More than that, when a hurricane comes the power generally goes out, and depending on the damage the winds may do to the utility infrastructure it could be as much as a week or more before it comes back on.
What use is your EV for heading to Lowe’s or Home Depot or elsewhere to begin your hurricane recovery then? For a couple of days you might be all right, but if your EV dies and you still have several days left before the power comes back on, you’re far worse off than with an internal combustion engine.
This will be an excellent debate, and one we imagine the anti-EV crowd will win at the Louisiana legislature. Now that Landry and his fellow governors are weighing in, it’s quite possible the EV wave has begun to peter out and return back out to sea.
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