The auto industry is backing away from electric vehicles in favor of hybrid options, signaling further defeats for the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to force electric vehicle sales on American buyers.
Ford announced last week that the auto giant is changing its electric vehicle strategy, abandoning plans to produce an all-electric three-row SUV and instead opting to build a hybrid for its next three-row SUV.
“We’re focused here on reshaping Ford into a higher-growth, higher-margin, capital-efficient, resilient company, and that means these vehicles need to be profitable,” John Lawler, Ford’s vice president and chief financial officer, said in a conference call with media Wednesday morning. “And if they’re not profitable, based on where the customer is in the market, we’re going to pivot and adjust and make those tough decisions.”
The announcement is a blow to left-wing electric vehicle initiatives, many of which Harris has promoted during her three-and-a-half years as vice president.
Kamala Harris mocked for ‘yellow school bus’ remark: ‘They can’t really let her speak in public’
Ford’s announcement is another defeat for the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to force electric vehicle sales on American buyers. (Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images)
“It is abundantly clear that the federal government’s push to impose electric vehicles on everyone was undesirable and unworkable. The mandates imposed on Americans under Biden-Harris will dismantle what remains of Michigan’s manufacturing base, destroy American jobs, and make us even more dependent on Communist China,” Tom Barrett, a Republican congressional candidate from Michigan, told Fox News Digital in response to the Dearborn-based Ford move last week. “In Congress, I will continue my fight to protect consumers’ rights to buy the vehicle that best meets their needs and family budget, not the social engineering agenda of Washington bureaucrats.”
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Fox News Digital examined Harris’s record and involvement in electric vehicle pushes and programs during her tenure as vice president, and found that the Democrat has played a significant role in promoting the end of traditional gas-powered vehicles. Harris rose to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket last month, after President Biden dropped out of the race amid growing concerns about his mental acuity at age 81.
Returning to her Senate career, Harris was one of the original signatories of the 2019 Green New Deal legislation introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward Markey, which set out a blueprint for transitioning the nation to 100% “clean energy” by 2040. The measure failed in the Senate.
Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden together on the campaign trail. (Getty Images)
After Biden-Harris won the 2020 election, Harris continued to lead climate change initiatives, most notably taking charge of the Clean School Bus Program. The EPA-backed program was created nearly three years ago as part of the Biden administration’s 2021 infrastructure bill, which allocated $5 billion to the program. Since then, the EPA has provided $1 billion in grants to help deliver nearly 2,500 electric school buses to school districts across the country.
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The federal government has credited Harris and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael S. Regan as the program’s main figures, but it has delivered only 60 school buses powered by electric or low-emission propane, according to data from the Washington Department of Transportation. Free Beacon was last reported month.
“Every school day, 25 million children ride our nation’s largest form of mass transit: the school bus. The vast majority of these buses run on diesel, exposing students, teachers, and bus drivers to toxic air pollution,” Harris said of the program earlier this year. “Today, we’re announcing nearly $1 billion in funding for clean school buses across the country. As part of our work to address the climate crisis, the historic funding we’re announcing today is an investment in our children, their health, and their education. It also strengthens our economy by investing in American manufacturing and the American workforce.”
Harris found herself in a viral moment in 2022, when she visited a Seattle school to promote the program and spoke about her love for yellow school buses. (Live image from Fox News Digital)
Amid the busing plan’s rollout, Harris found herself in a viral moment in 2022, when she visited a Seattle school to promote the program and spoke about her love for yellow school buses — comments that were later mocked on social media.
“Who doesn’t love a yellow school bus, right? Can you raise your hand if you love a yellow school bus? Many of us went to school on a yellow school bus, right? It’s part of our growing up experience. It’s part of the nostalgia, the memories of the excitement and joy of going to school to be with your favorite teacher, to be with your best friends and to learn. The school bus takes us there,” Harris said in her rambling remarks.
Critics were quick to respond that Democrats “can’t really let this happen.” [Harris] “Speak out about anything.”
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“The Democrats have been hiding Kamala, but she just held a press conference and talked about yellow school buses, oh my god they can’t really let her speak publicly about anything,” OutKick founder Clay Travis posted on X at the time.
“Selina Meyer,” tweeted The Federalist writer Eddie Scarry, referring to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ character on the HBO comedy “Veep.”
“Find someone who loves you as much as Kamala Harris loves Venn diagrams and yellow school buses,” tweeted Republican activist Matthew Foldi.
CNN contributor Mary Kathryn Ham joked, “Please sing ‘Wheels on the Bus,’ please sing ‘Wheels on the Bus.'”
In another widely shared moment, Harris was filmed awkwardly singing “the wheels on the bus go round and round.”
Harris was also tasked with helping lead the Electric Vehicle Charging Action Plan in December 2021, to ensure that 50% of car sales are electric by 2030. The Biden-Harris administration took further action against the plan this year with one of the most significant climate regulations in U.S. history — which would force half of all new cars and trucks sold in 2030 to be electric.
“Together, we have made historic progress,” Biden said of the plan in March. “Hundreds of new, expanded factories across the country. Hundreds of billions in private investment and thousands of good-paying union jobs. We will meet my 2030 goal and move forward rapidly in the years ahead.”
The $7.5 billion federal program, part of the 2021 infrastructure bill, aimed to install half a million electric vehicle charging stations across the country, but had produced only eight federal charging stations as of May.
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Last May, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg addressed the lack of charging stations on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” when host Margaret Brennan asked him why only eight stations had been installed.
“Now, to make a charger, it’s not just plugging a small device into the ground,” the minister said. “There’s utility work, and that’s also a really new category of federal investment. But we’re working with every one of the 50 states.”
“Seven or eight, anyway?” Brennan said with a laugh.
“Again, by 2030, there will be 500,000 chargers. And now the first batch of chargers is actually being built,” Buttigieg said.
Electric car plugged into a charging station. (Kurt “Cyber Jay” Knutson)
Auto industry leaders have long argued that the push by Democrats — particularly the Biden-Harris administration — toward electric vehicles was rolled out too quickly and is likely to fail.
“The problem with the whole electric vehicle movement is that there was a tremendous amount of hype behind it, largely from what I call the liberal mainstream media, making it seem like the next car for everyone was going to be an electric car,” Bob Lutz, a former CEO of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, told Fox Digital in April. “And of course, the government was pushing it, because of their climate change policies. That was never going to happen.”
“And yes, it came too soon and too quickly,” he added.
Earlier this year, data showed that electric vehicles were eating into Ford’s profit margin. The company’s Model E, the company’s electric vehicle division, posted a net loss of $4.7 billion last year — including $1.6 billion in the last quarter — and Ford CFO John Lawler explained during the company’s earnings call in February that “the quarter and year were impacted by challenging market dynamics and investments in next-generation vehicles.”
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President Biden participates in a test run before the Democratic National Convention begins on August 19, 2024 in Chicago. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Ford, the country’s second-largest electric-vehicle brand after Tesla, said last week when announcing its shift in electric vehicle strategy that it would face a $400 million writedown on “certain product-specific manufacturing assets” to cancel the electric SUV.
Fox News Digital reached out to Ford on Sunday for additional comment on its future with electric vehicles, but did not immediately receive a response.
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As Democrats continue to promote a frenzied push for electric vehicles, former President Trump has vowed to end the Biden administration’s “mandate” to boost electric vehicle sales.
Former President Trump laughs as he answers a reporter’s question after his remarks on Aug. 20, 2024, at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in Howell, Michigan. (Nick Antaya/Getty Images)
“I will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one,” Trump said at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month. “Thereby saving the American auto industry from total annihilation, which is happening now, and saving American customers thousands and thousands of dollars per car.”
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Earlier this month, Trump discussed electric cars again in an interview with Tesla founder Elon Musk. Musk’s Tesla is the nation’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer. Trump said Musk’s cars were “fantastic,” but that fossil fuels were inextricably linked to building electric cars and that the United States needed to “drill, baby, drill.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on the state of electric vehicles a few days after she accepted the Democratic nomination, but did not immediately receive a response.
Fox News’s Kristen Altus and Eric Revell contributed to this report.
Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign, exclusive interviews and more on our digital Elections Center on Fox News.
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