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The Biden Administration Sets Goal of Half Electric Cars by 2030 – Opinion

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Recently President Joe Biden signed an executive order with the goal for half of all new cars electric models by the year 2030. The order, which was written with the support of large automakers, proposes new emission standards.

It includes a 10 percent stringency increase in the 2023 models and states it seeks to tackle carbon emissions in the atmosphere that warm the planet while making the United States a competitor to China in the electric car market.

Challenges of Making the Goal

While the goal of making half of all new vehicles electric by the year of 2030 is necessary to lower carbon emissions from the transmission, it is a difficult goal to accomplish. According to the Pew Research Center, there are about 2 million electric vehicles on the road in the United States currently.

In 2020, only two percent of all cars sold were electric vehicles. This means that there will need to be an increase of 48 percent in all the cars that are produced in just nine years. The order is not binding, it won’t become a mandated law, but the goal is to support automakers in their quest to produce half of their new vehicles as electric.

Beyond the production of these vehicles, there will need to be many more charging stations installed around the country. The electric Tesla charger is the most common charging port but there are only over 800 around the country. This will need to drastically increase if the United States is to reach the goal of half new electric vehicles by the end of the decade.

Accessibility of Electric Vehicles

One of the biggest complaints about electric vehicles is that they are expensive. This isn’t the case anymore. Most people remember that Tesla started their business model with high-end electric cars, but the brand and others have manufactured more affordable electric models. There are many new hybrid vehicles that are on the market for under $35,000.

Europe leads the way in electric vehicles. Almost three-quarters of all the cars sold in Norway are electric. In Iceland, about half of them are. In the United States, California has more electric vehicles than any other state. Since there needs to be a massive increase in the accessibility of electric vehicles, funding from the government will be needed.

Government Funding

Both U.S. and foreign automakers have said that it will require billions of dollars in government funding to accomplish the goal. Over the last year, China has spent over $3 billion to boost electric vehicle production. Not only does this suggest that the United States will need to spend more than that to reach the goal, but it also reveals that the world will need to mine 5 million tons of lithium for the batteries that go into these cars. Overall, between the production of cars and the mining of lithium will cost $100 billion over the next nine years.

Why it’s Necessary

It will be a challenge to accomplish the goal of making half the new cars electric by 2030, but it’s absolutely necessary to mitigate the carbon emissions pumped into the atmosphere and warming the planet. The Environmental Protection Agency said that transportation accounted for 29 percent of gas emissions in 2019. With the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stating that we have 12 years to reverse the impacts of climate change in 2018, 2030 is the year that the group of the world’s leading scientists says we won’t be able to reverse the effects.

Though President Biden signed the executive order calling for half of all new vehicles to be electric by that same year, it is a challenge that the United States must not just meet but exceed if the world is to mitigate the amount of carbon pumped into the atmosphere and warming the planet. 

There is no doubt that civilization is headed towards irrevocable changes in the climate, which will have untold consequences on the flora and fauna of the planet. It is a tough number to meet, but science suggests that it is completely necessary to accomplish this goal. When looking critically at the changes that need to be made to reverse the effects of climate change, the goal that half of new vehicles will need to be electric is within reason. 


Author Bio: Ryan Beitler is a journalist, writer, and blogger who has covered green energy and technology for dozens of publications.