Congress: It’s Time to Help All Americans Drive Electric
By Mahmoud Ramadan
With his visit to Michigan last week, President Biden and leading automakers sent clear signals that the future of the auto industry is electric. This shift is vital for many reasons: it will create jobs, help the U.S. meet climate goals, improve air quality, and save drivers money. But to fully unlock these benefits, we need to make sure that everyone is able to drive electric — and the Build Back Better framework is a critical step.
Cleaner cars are critical. Transportation accounts for nearly 30 percent of all U.S. emissions, most of which wind up in low-income communities. Study after study has found that low-income communities suffer disproportionately from air pollution and related illnesses. These disparities underscore the importance of an equitable transition to electric vehicles (EVs), to make sure that the communities facing the worst impacts of dirty tailpipes can enjoy the health benefits of emissions-free transportation.
Although the EV market is moving fast, it’s not moving fast enough. Electric cars and light trucks reached just 2 percent of U.S. vehicle sales overall in 2020, jumping to more than 20 percent of all passenger vehicles sales this summer. But as of the end of 2020, there were only about 1.3 million EVs on the road in the U.S. compared to 286.9 million cars overall.
This is because, until recently, the electric car and truck market has mainly attracted wealthier, White buyers, making electric cars a luxury rather than the default option for new purchases. Even though electric cars bring many lifetime savings, our research has found significant barriers to EV equity: upfront costs can be high, more public charging infrastructure is needed in underserved communities, and while homeowners benefit from at-home charging, renters multi-unit building tenants often have to rely on higher-cost commercial chargers. To unlock the benefits of EVs, we need to make electric cars affordable and accessible for all drivers.
President Biden’s Build Back Better framework would help give us the push we need to bring costs down and start equitably electrifying passenger transportation. While many electric cars are already cheaper than gas-powered ones, the Build Back Better framework makes electric models the clear economical option. Buyers could see $7,500 off the sticker price for any new electric car, an additional $4,500 off for ones made domestically in a union factory, and another $500 for models with U.S.-made batteries. These reductions could total $12,500 off a new electric car, bringing the MSRP of a 2021 Chevrolet Bolt from about $35,000 to just $22,500, for example. The bill would also give $4,000 off of used EVs to support adoption at all levels of the market. And since electric cars and trucks are cheaper to operate and maintain over their lifetimes, this is only the beginning of the savings that buyers would see.
Charging infrastructure is also essential for an equitable transition, and federal support can make an enormous difference. Just like the federal government helped create the interstate highway system and the gas station infrastructure that supports it, the Build Back Better framework would build on the $7.5 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure package and allocate billions of dollars to build out a strong national charging network. The framework would also prioritize chargers in residential apartment complexes and businesses in underserved communities — meaning that people without garages can charge their cars without paying higher rates than drivers with at-home charging.
If we take action, we can ensure that the U.S. builds more equitable transportation networks and improves air quality and public health in our communities — all while doing our part to protect the future of the planet. The Build Back Better framework is a critical step in this direction, and the U.S. must act now to accelerate the shift to electric cars and trucks.
Author
Mahmoud Ramadan is a graduate student at the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and co-author of a recent MIT study on equity in the transition to EVs
