A top Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official tasked with guiding the Biden administration’s emissions regulation policies was unable to approximate the average cost of electric vehicles (EVs) sold in the U.S., despite his own agency pushing to largely regulate combustion engine cars out of the auto market over the next 10 years.
Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation (OAR) Joseph Goffman admitted that he “[did not] know the exact dollars” needed to buy the average EV in the U.S. when asked by Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado during a House Oversight Committee hearing on the EPA’s proposed tailpipe emissions regulations. The proposed regulations would strictly limit the amount of emissions from the total number of vehicles a given manufacturer sells in a year, effectively forcing auto manufacturers to sell a higher proportion of EVs, according to The New York Times.
The OAR is a subunit of the EPA that “develops national programs, policies, and regulations for controlling air pollution,” according to the OAR’s website. The EPA estimates that the proposed tailpipe emissions regulations could force 67% of all new light-duty vehicles sold after model year 2032 to be EVs, according to an EPA press release.
The average price paid for new EVs sold in the U.S. in May 2023 was about $55,488, while the average price for new internal combustion engine cars was approximately $48,528, according to data from Cox Automotive. The Biden administration has publicly stated its goal of having EVs comprise 50% of all American vehicle sales by 2030. Only 5.8% of 2022 new car sales in the U.S. were all-electric, according to The New York Times. (RELATED: China Dominates EV Market As Biden Pushes To Phase Out Combustion Engine)
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A combustion engine car emits 8,887 grams of carbon dioxide per gallon of fuel, while EVs do not emit any carbon dioxide while in operation, according to the EPA’s website. Carbon dioxide is by far the most prevalent of the “greenhouse gases,” which trap heat inside the atmosphere, according to the EPA’s website.
However, EV charging stations are much harder to come by than standard gas stations, and their batteries can take long periods of time to reach full charge, according to Autoweek. The manufacturing process for EVs is also more carbon-intensive than that of gas-powered cars, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Biden administration allotted taxpayer funds amounting to $7.5 billion for EV charging stations, $10 billion for green transportation and over $7 billion for EV battery components in the bipartisan infrastructure law alone. The EV spending push is a pillar of the administration’s larger climate and infrastructure agenda. As a candidate for the presidency in 2019, Biden pledged a personal “guarantee” that his administration would “end fossil fuels.”
Goffman has come under fire in recent months for alleged ethics violations pertaining to his reported preferential treatment of Harvard in his duties as a government official.
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