“This sucker’s quick:” Biden test-drives electric Ford ute, fleshes out EV plan

The Driven

The transition to electric vehicles in one of the world’s biggest and toughest markets – the United States – is beginning to take shape as President Joe Biden begins fleshing out a potential pathway to transitioning away from combustion vehicles.

President Joe Biden admits US is playing catch up with a world rapidly overtaking it (despite the success of Tesla), and has announced a plan to boost the growth of locally manufactured electric vehicles in the US. “The American Jobs Plan will create incentives to continue to lower the cost of and support market demand for electric vehicles”, he said.

It is part of the administration’s $2 trillion USD infrastrucutre plan. Consumer incentives to purchase EVs are the keystone of the plan, with a caveat that these incentives will not go towards “luxury models” and that they would incentivise manufactureres with good labour practices. Additional cash will go towards EV charging stations, research, supply chain and manufacturing.

The announcement also includes money for transit buses, school buses and the transformation of federal government fleets to electric alternatives. “The federal government spends more than a half-a-trillion dollars buying goods and services each year. This purchasing power can be used to drive innovation and clean energy production, as well as to support high quality jobs”.

Biden made the announcement at the Ford testing track in Dearborn, Michigan. He test-drove the new Ford F150 Lightning electric ute, seen as a game-changing vehicle given the popularity of the ICE version of this model among Americans.

In Australia, energy minister Angus Taylor said he won’t drive an electric vehicle.

To view the full article please go to RenewEconomy’s electric vehicle sister site, The Driven…