The auto industry is backing away from electric vehicles in favor of hybrids, marking yet another defeat for the Biden-Harris administration's efforts to force electric vehicle sales to U.S. buyers.
Ford last week announced a shift in its electric vehicle strategy, abandoning a planned all-electric three-row SUV and instead prioritizing the development of a hybrid for its next three-row SUV range.
“Our focus is to reshape Ford into a higher-growth, higher-margin, more capital-efficient and more durable company, and that means these vehicles need to be profitable,” Ford Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said in a media conference call Wednesday morning. “And if they're not, we'll pivot, adjust and make tough decisions based on where our customers are in the marketplace.”
The announcement is a blow to the left-wing pro-electric vehicle movement that Harris has championed over the past three and a half years as vice president.
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Ford's announcement is another defeat for the Biden-Harris administration's efforts to force EV sales to American buyers. (Kenny Holston Pool/Getty Images)
“It's clear that the federal government's attempt to force electric vehicles on the American people was both undesirable and unworkable. The mandate imposed on the American people under a Biden-Harris Administration will dismantle what's left of Michigan's industrial base, destroy American jobs, and increase our dependency on Communist China,” Michigan Republican House candidate Tom Barrett told Fox News Digital following Dearborn-based Ford's move last week. “In Congress, I will continue to fight for consumers' rights to purchase the vehicle that fits their needs and their family's budget, not the social engineering ploys of Washington bureaucrats.”
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Fox News Digital has looked into Harris' involvement in electric vehicle promotions and programs during her time as vice president, revealing that the Democrat has played a major role in pushing for the phase-out of traditional gasoline-powered vehicles. Harris rose to the forefront of Democratic presidential candidates last month after President Biden dropped out of the race amid growing concerns about his mental health and his advanced age of 81.
During her time as a senator, Harris was one of the original co-signers of the 2019 Green New Deal bill introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), which sought to establish a blueprint for transitioning the country to 100% “clean energy” by 2040, but it died in the Senate.
Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden are campaigning together. (Getty Images)
After the Biden-Harris ticket won the 2020 election, Harris continued to spearhead climate change efforts, most notably as head of the Clean School Bus Program. The EPA-backed program was created nearly three years ago as a provision in the Biden administration's 2021 infrastructure bill, which allocated $5 billion for the program. The EPA has since provided $1 billion in grants to equip school districts across the country with about 2,500 electric school buses.
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Ms. Harris and EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan were touted by the federal government as leaders of the program, but the Washington Free Beacon reported last month that only 60 school buses have been delivered: battery-electric or low-emission propane-fueled school buses.
“Every day, 25 million children ride on school buses, the nation's largest public transportation system. The majority of these buses run on diesel fuel, exposing students, teachers and bus drivers to toxic air pollution,” Harris said about the program earlier this year. “Today, we announced nearly $1 billion for clean school buses across the country. As part of our efforts to address the climate crisis, the historic funding we're announcing today is an investment in our kids, their health and their education. It will also strengthen our economy by investing in American manufacturing and the American workforce.”
Harris made headlines in 2022 when she visited Seattle schools to promote the program and speak passionately about her love for yellow school buses. (Image direct from Fox News Digital)
As the busing plan was being rolled out, Harris made headlines when she visited Seattle schools in 2022 to promote the plan and gushed about her love for yellow school buses, comments that were subsequently mocked on social media.
“Who doesn't love a yellow school bus? 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 the experience we had growing up. It's part of the nostalgia, it's the memories of the excitement and the joy of going to school with your favorite teachers, with your best friends, and to learn. The school bus gets us there,” Harris said in her rambling remarks.
Critics quickly hit back, saying Democrats “cannot get her to talk about anything in public.”
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“Democrats have been hiding Kamala, but she just had a press conference where she talked about yellow school buses and they really can't let her say anything in public,” Outkick founder Clay Travis posted on X at the time.
“Selina Meyer,” The Federalist author Eddie Scarry tweeted, 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,” Republican activist Matthew Foldi wrote on Twitter.
CNN contributor Mary Katharine Hamm also joked, “Sing 'Wheels on the Bus.' Sing 'Wheels on the Bus.'”
In fact, Harris was caught on camera awkwardly singing “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round” during another viral moment.
Harris was also responsible for spearheading the Electric Vehicle Charging Action Plan in December 2021, which committed to making 50% of auto sales electric by 2030. The Biden-Harris administration clamped down on that plan even further this year with one of the most significant climate change regulations in U.S. history, requiring half of new cars and trucks sold in 2030 to be electric.
“Together we've made historic progress — hundreds of new factories expanding across the country, hundreds of billions of dollars in private investment and thousands of good-paying union jobs created. And we're meeting our goals for 2030 and making progress in the years ahead,” Biden said of the plan in March.
A $7.5 billion federal program that was part of the 2021 infrastructure bill aimed to install 500,000 EV charging stations across the country, but as of May, only eight federal charging stations had been installed.
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In May, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared on CBS' “Face the Nation” and was grilled by host Margaret Brennan about why the U.S. has only eight charging stations, pointing out the lack of them.
“Building a charger takes more than just sticking a little device in the ground,” the secretary said. “It also requires public works, and this is a whole new area of federal investment. But we're working with all 50 states.”
“But maybe seven or eight?” Brennan said with a laugh.
“Again, we need 500,000 chargers by 2030,” Buttigieg said. “And the first few chargers have already started to be physically built.”
An electric car plugged into a charging station. (Kurt “Cyberguy” Knutson)
Auto industry leaders have long argued that Democrats, particularly the Biden-Harris administration, are pushing for electric vehicles too quickly and are likely to fail.
“The problem with the whole EV movement is that there was a huge amount of hype behind it, mostly from the liberal mainstream media, as if everyone's next car was going to be an EV,” former Ford, Chrysler and General Motors executive Bob Lutz told Fox Digital in April. “And of course the government was pushing it because of climate change policy. And it never quite happened.”
“And certainly it happened too quickly and too suddenly,” he added.
Earlier this year, data showed electric vehicles were eating into Ford's profit margins. The company's EV division, the Ford Model E, posted a net loss of $4.7 billion last year, including $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter. “Both the quarter and the year were impacted by challenging market trends and investments in our next-generation vehicles,” Ford Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said on the company's earnings call in February.
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President Biden took part in the rolling testing ahead of the start of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 19, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Ford, the second-largest US EV brand after Tesla, said last week when announcing its shift in EV strategy that the discontinuation of development of an EV SUV would result in a $400 million impairment of “certain product-specific manufacturing assets.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Ford on Sunday for additional comment about its EV future but did not immediately receive a response.
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As Democrats continue to defend their enthusiastic push for electric vehicles, former President Trump has vowed that the Biden administration will end its “mandate” to increase electric vehicle sales.
Former President Trump laughs while answering a reporter's question after making remarks at the Livingston County Sheriff's Office in Howell, Michigan, on August 20, 2024. (Nick Antaya/Getty Images)
“On day one, I will end the electric vehicle mandate, saving the American auto industry from the total annihilation that is currently occurring and saving American customers thousands of dollars per car,” he said at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month.
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Earlier this month, President Trump spoke again about electric vehicles in an interview with Tesla founder Elon Musk, whose company is the largest electric vehicle manufacturer in the U.S. President Trump said Musk's cars are “great,” but that fossil fuels are also heavily involved in the production of electric vehicles, and that the U.S. needs to “dig, dig, dig.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Harris' campaign for comment on the EV situation just days after she accepted the Democratic nomination, but did not immediately receive a response.
Fox News' Kristen Altas and Eric Revell contributed to this report.
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