As part and parcel of her campaign strategy of rebooting Joe Biden's successful 2020 basement blueprint , Kamala Harris has debuted yet another 180-degree policy reversal via press release . The vice president's campaign announced that contrary to former President Donald Trump's claims to the contrary, the Democratic presidential nominee "does not support an electric vehicle mandate," the same way Harris is suddenly pretending she never supported a ban on fracking and private health insurance, opposed constructing a barrier along the Southern border, otherwise known as a "wall," and co-sponsored Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.
In reality, of course, it's not just that Harris has vociferously supported EV mandates both before and during her tenure as vice president, but that she has done so to the tune of thousands of dollars in taxpayer losses for each EV sold and tens of thousands of dollars of losses for the private sector.
Harris famously staked out her place as the Senate's furthest-left member when she co-sponsored a bill to ban combustion-engine cars by 2040. And, through executive fiat and emissions standards, the Biden-Harris administration has mandated that zero-emissions cars comprise the majority of new car sales as early as 2032, meaning that a full 70% of cars sold must be either hybrid or entirely electric.
The White House infamously allocated $7.5 billion in taxpayer funds through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act for a fleet of new EV chargers nationwide, producing just seven total charging spaces with 38 charging slots in total thus far. But Uncle Sam's bailout of the EV bust is ongoing.
Taxpayers spend $7,500 per new EV and $4,000 per used EV in federal subsidies, with state and local taxpayers footing an extra $1,500 for each EV purchase. Even so, Ford announced that in the quarter ending in June, the auto giant lost a staggering $44,000 per EV sold. Per its own admission, Ford is slated to lose $5 billion just in 2024.
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For what it's worth, tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies and private sector losses still haven't managed to overcome mere market demand. The share of hybrids, plug-in hybrid EVs, and battery-powered EVs sold relative to total annual car sales rose from 12.9% in 2022 to 16.3% in 2023. But that's predominately thanks to a disproportionate growth in hybrid sales. In reality, EV sales are actually slowing. Brands such as Toyota, which have acknowledged drivers overwhelmingly favor the flexibility of Priuses over the limitations of fully electric cars, have capitalized on the American obsession with adhering to the Biden-Harris diktat. Whereas Toyota's stock is up nearly 13% over the past year, Ford's is down more than 7%, or even more in inflation-adjusted terms.
Plenty of Harris's policy reversals posit tantalizing hypotheticals. If the White House hadn't reversed Trump's border policies, would we have suffered an influx of more than 10 million illegal immigrants since she took office? If she hadn't signaled her opposition to fracking, would the administration have approved more offshore drilling permits and permits to drill on federal land and avoid the 49% increase in gas prices since January 2021? But the matter of Harris's opposition to gas-powered cars isn't a what-if. At Harris's behest, the White House has spent three years shoving an EV mandate down our throats, and taxpayers and private firms alike have the receipts to prove it.
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