Biden wants to replace government fleet with electric vehicles



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President Joe Biden will begin the process of phasing out the federal government’s use of gasoline-powered vehicles and replacing them with vehicles that run on electricity. The announcement is the fulfillment of a campaign promise Biden made to swap government fleet vehicles for US-made electric vehicles.

“The federal government also has a huge fleet of vehicles, which we’re going to replace with clean electric vehicles made right here in America, by American workers,” Biden said at a briefing Monday announcing his “Buy American” executive order. .

This is great news for US-based electric vehicle manufacturers such as Tesla, Rivian and Lordstown, as well as for traditional automakers such as Ford and General Motors, which are in the midst of multi-billion dollar investments. dollars in the production of electric vehicles.

In 2019, there were nearly 650,000 vehicles in the federal government’s fleet, according to the General Service Administration. This includes 245,000 civilian vehicles, 173,000 military vehicles and 225,000 post office vehicles. These vehicles traveled 4.5 billion kilometers in 2019.

Biden also vowed to create a system that offers discounts or incentives to consumers to replace gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles – although there are no more details on that plan at this time.

Details of the two plans are still being worked out, but taken together they represent a huge victory for EV investments made by automakers in recent years. Ford has announced that it will spend $ 11 billion to introduce a series of new electric vehicles, including the Mustang Mach-E and an electric version of its best-selling F-150 pickup truck. GM has pledged to spend $ 27 billion on electric and autonomous vehicles through 2025.

Meanwhile, Tesla’s remarkable stock rally throughout 2020 made it the world’s most valuable automaker and its CEO Elon Musk the richest man on the planet.

Biden’s order may not be a straight win for Tesla, which has mainly focused on luxury and performance vehicles. Auto makers that could benefit include Ford, which recently unveiled an electric version of its Transit vans, and GM, which has just created a new company called BrightDrop focused on electric delivery vehicles.

One federal agency that could desperately use a new fleet of zero-emission vehicles is the United States Postal Service. Hundreds of the agency’s mail trucks, manufactured by Northrop Grumman, have caught fire in recent years, Vice recently reported. And the USPS deadline for official submissions to manufacture its next-generation mail truck was delayed last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The USPS ‘current truck replacement program was initiated in 2015. But it has dragged on, forcing the Postal Service to keep its current trucks in service beyond their expected lifespan – despite the fact that they have were introduced in the late 1980s and early. 90’s and lack features like air conditioning. Two of the original six companies dropped out.

One of Biden’s goals is to create 1 million new jobs in the automotive industry and “position America as the world leader in the manufacture of electric vehicles and their inputs and parts.” The president said he would achieve this by swapping the government fleet for electric vehicles and adopting a ‘cash for clunkers’ plan to ensure that every vehicle on the road is zero emissions by 2040. And he pledged to spend billions of dollars to add 550,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States.

Biden also said he supports the federal $ 7,500 electric vehicle tax credit and would be prepared to consider new incentives to encourage car buyers to consider going electric. Former President Donald Trump tried to end the federal electric vehicle tax credit in his 2020 budget proposal, but was unsuccessful. Also under Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency rescinded Obama-era emissions rules aimed at forcing the auto industry to make less polluting vehicles.

Biden has already taken steps to reverse Trump’s rollback of Obama-era emissions rules. On his inauguration day, Biden ordered federal agencies to review energy efficiency standards as well as the rules governing aircraft emissions and the energy efficiency standards of devices and buildings.

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