Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin slammed the Biden administration’s lofty electric vehicle (EV) plans as “ludicrous,” saying the U.S. should first address root issues.
Manchin expressed concerns that the administration was focusing too much on electric vehicle incentives rather than shoring up the domestic battery and critical mineral supply chains, during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Thursday. [bold, links added]
He noted that China, which controls the vast majority of global critical mineral mining and refining needed for renewable energy tech, could use its leverage over the U.S. for geopolitical reasons.
“There’s a waiting list for EVs right now with the fuel price at $4,” Manchin told Buttigieg. “But they still want us to throw $5,000 or $7,000 or $12,000 credit to buy an electric vehicle.”
“It makes no sense to me whatsoever when supply and demand — we can’t produce the product for the people who want it and we’re still going to pay them to take it? It’s absolutely ludicrous in my mind,” he continued.
“But I’m thinking we are getting ourselves tangled in a situation that we’re not going to be able to supply … everything that’s going to be needed for this product.”
The West Virginia lawmaker then asked Buttigieg if the Department of Transportation shared his concerns about EV shortages and credits.
“We are following this closely and I think it’s a great example of one of the areas of manufacturing capacity that we’ve got to do more of right here on American soil,” Buttigieg responded.
“If you look at the timelines that the physicists have laid out on climate, some of them can — in terms of our action and our need to rise to the challenge — could arguably be measured in months rather than years at this point.”
“So, we feel a sense of enormous urgency to accelerate not just the uptake of electric vehicles, but, as you note, their production and our productive capacity for them,” he added.
Buttigieg didn’t address Manchin’s concerns about the EV credit included in President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act.
U.S. consumers in the market for an EV must wait up to 18 months to receive their purchase depending on the desired model. Several popular Tesla EVs, for example, have wait times stretching into late 2023.
The Build Back Better Act includes up to a $12,500 tax credit for purchases of electric vehicles made with union labor using American batteries. EVs made in non-union shops would offer consumers much smaller credits.
Biden has promised that 50% of new vehicle sales in the U.S. will be emissions-free by 2030 and every addition to the federal government’s 600,000-vehicle fleet will be electric by 2035.
Read more at Daily Caller
Secretary Pete knows as much about climate as he does about EV’s. If you can’t succeed in private industry you can always get a job with the federal government. Complete incompetence is all that is required.
Like all climate paranoics, Buttigieg’s paranoia is based on CO2 driven climate models. Models which ALL overestimate projected warming compared to satellite and weather balloon actual temperatures. For thirty years the world has been going to end in ten years. Yet here we still are, the best fed, longest-living, most prosperous human beings that have ever existed. Thanks to the ONLY GREEN ENERGY – fossil fuels. That is the science. I’m a farmer with a biology degree. My living depends on my understanding of climate. Buttigieg has NO clue about climate. No clue about energy. And NO clue how more CO2 is improving food production and making the environment greener. While having little effect on our normal, natural climate cycles. Which remain well within the normal, natural twelve degree C range of our three million year ongoing Pleistocene Ice Age.
Folks that are driven by ideology are BLIND to facts & REASON, much like religious extremists. They have NO CAPACITY to see any constructive alternatives or potential SOLUTIONS that don’t fit their very narrow “bandwidth.” While I applaud Den. Manchin’s common sense approach, I fear he is a very LONELY voice in the current Democratic party. Best hope for a turnaround is a record “Red Wave” in the November mid-term elections. The electorate needs to send a resounding message that the current political course is completely unacceptable before the ongoing domestic decline develops any further. This Administration’s agenda will do nothing to promote prosperity or liberty. At this stage, that should be obvious to any critical thinking citizen…
The “polls” indicate a ‘red wave’, and the media are pushing hard on this idea. Why? So that some conservatives will think, it’s going to be a walk-over anyway, so I really don’t need to vote. WRONG!!!
The ‘blues’ will turn out in droves. Welfare recipients, regular unionists, and especially government union employees’ along with students. That’s one a heck of a ‘base’.
Every conservative must be registered to vote, and actually get out there and vote.
The more precincts reporting that the counted votes exceed the number of registered voters the better. (Sort of a very gentle hint that a small amount of fraud just might be involved.)
“If you look at the timelines that the physicists have laid out on climate, some of them can — in terms of our action and our need to rise to the challenge — could arguably be measured in months rather than years at this point.””
So like 1,200. My guess
I would like to see a few examples of those which “could arguably be measured in months”.
The average American family can not afford an electric car. Yet, for those who can, some must wait 18 months. This says a lot about the Democrat’s starry eyed dreams that all new cars will be electric. As Senator Manchin is pointing out, the situation is worse if the electric grid is considered in addition to electric vehicles. The resources simply don’t exist even if Americans could afford it.
just like Clinton and Obama Biden bases everything on Politics and Junk Science not the truth proof he in not worthy of the Oval Office and neither is Harris or any of the rest of the Democrat/Globalists