The Biden Administration is taking further steps towards reducing planet-warming emissions by pivoting to electric vehicles, with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announcing two proposed rules on Wednesday. The rules are designed to ensure that 67% of new passenger cars and 25% of heavy trucks sold in the US are all-electric by 2032. The EPA is not mandating a certain number of electric cars to be sold, but it is setting tighter pollution standards for new cars and trucks with model years between 2027 and 2032. The standards for emissions are based on the size and type of vehicle being built, and the EPA says most companies will have to produce 67% all-electric cars to follow the new rules, but the standards also allow automakers to find other ways to meet the emissions rules. The EPA wants 67% of new light-duty vehicles, 46% of new medium-duty trucks, and 25% of heavy-duty vehicles to be electric.
The proposed rules, which will be available for public comment and review, are likely to face legal challenges. Many automakers have argued that the transition to all-electric vehicles could come at a cost, with some auto workers fearing job losses as electric vehicles require fewer workers to assemble vehicles than internal combustion engines do. In the past year, both Ford and Chrysler parent company Stellantis have announced layoffs prompted by the shift to electric vehicles. General Motors, on the other hand, is fully leaning into the electric vehicle revolution, ramping up electric vehicle production as it aims to produce more than one million EV vehicles in North America in 2025. The US automaker is aiming to solely make electric vehicles by 2035.
The EPA is projecting that the new standards would avoid emitting 10 billion tons of carbon emissions through 2055. While sales of electric vehicles in the US have increased in the past few years, automakers will need to heavily lean into electric vehicle manufacturing and sales to meet these new EPA requirements. However, even then, the new standards fall short of some environmental recommendations. A International Energy Agency report from 2021 found that countries would have to completely stop sales of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035 in order to stop global temperatures from increasing 1.5 degrees Celsius. In 2021, the Biden Administration committed to reducing US greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2030 and hit net-zero emissions by 2050.