This past Thursday, Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation made the argument that the people of Texas should look into purchasing electric vehicles.
As part of a keynote address issued while attending the Texas Tribune Festival, Buttigieg expressed that the citizens of Texas could end up saving quite a bit of money by taking strides to purchase electric cars in order to dodge the cost at the fuel pump. “Some of the best use cases for electric vehicles are in places like Texas,” stated Buttigieg. “places where people spend more time in their vehicles, where you drive longer distances than in a dense coastal city and therefore spend more money on gas and therefore would save more money — provided you can afford an electric vehicle, which is why we’re fighting to make electric vehicles cheaper.”
Officials within the Biden administration have chosen to set up an “ambitious target” of making sure that electric vehicles count as 50% of all care sales within the United States by as soon as 2030, as reported by a fact sheet from the White House. Old Uncle Joe recently put his autograph onto the new Inflation Reduction Act, which sports over $369 billion slated for various climate initiatives — including roughly $7,500 in tax credits for all newly bought electric vehicles.
As part of the address issued on Thursday, the nation should be trying to invest far more heavily into alternate modes of transportation. “Cars will always play an important role in our lives, but you should not have to bring two tons of metal with you everywhere you’re going,” he went on.
The White House also set up a lofty goal of getting ahold of 100% zero-emission light-duty vehicles by as soon as 2027 and will set up the same standard for all vehicles across the federal fleet by 2035, as explained via a fact sheet from the White House.
Buttigieg recently highlighted a new policy stemming from the California Air Resources Board which will mandate that 35% of new vehicles to produce zero emissions by 2026 — a standard that is slated to gradually rise to the 100% mark by 2035. The policy was revealed just days before officials overlooking the grid asked the residents of the area to lower their energy usage throughout the peak hours of a heatwave, which would include them not taking time to charge their electric vehicles, in the interest of staving off wholesale grid power failure.
Buttigieg went on to argue that speed is needed for a policy involving an electric vehicle. “We’ve got to make sure that this happens quickly enough to help us beat climate change,” he stated as part of an interview with Fox 11 Los Angeles. “We’ve got to make sure it happens affordably enough that’s it not just wealthy people, but low-income people who most need those gas savings if they can afford the EVs in the first place.”
Virginia, Washington, and Massachusetts are slated to trail along in the wake of California’s Air Resources Board policy to go along with previously instated law, although the Republicans in Virginia are trying to overturn the recently created regulation.
While speaking out about the high cost of electric cars in relation to gas vehicles, Buttigieg has stated that the increasing fuel prices could end up forcing Americans to look to alternatives. “The more pain we are all experiencing from the high price of gas, the more benefit there is for those who can access electric vehicles,” he expressed as part of a hearing for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.