US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg appeared on CBS-TV's Face the Nation on Sunday night to promote the Biden administration’s support of electric vehicles (EVs) in the US and its campaign strategies focusing on climate change. What he faced was skepticism about EVs from the program’s host, Margaret Brennan, who asked him about remarks from former president Donald Trump about billions of taxpayers’ dollars being spent on subsidies for EVs and yet EV sales were very low. “I want to ask you about something that we hear quite a lot about on the campaign trail and that is electric cars, electric vehicles. Donald Trump repeatedly talks about President Biden’s decision to force the industry towards making 56% of cars electric by 2032, 13% hybrid,” Brennan said, adding “He’s not wrong on the purchasing.” Buttigieg was quick to respond. “Oh, he’s wrong,” he replied. Brennan pushed ahead with her thought, saying “He’s not. Of the four million vehicles purchased, 269,000 electric vehicles were sold in the US market. It’s up like 2%.” “And every single year more Americans buy EVs than the year before. This is really important,” responded Buttigieg. “But why aren’t we seeing it move more quickly,” asked Brennan. Buttigieg replied, “Every single year more Americans buy EVs than the year prior. There are two things that I think are needed for that to happen even more quickly. One is the price, which is why the Inflation Reduction Act acted to cut the price of an electric vehicle.” “The second is making sure we have the charging network we need across America.” “But I want to talk about the bigger point here, and I take this personally because I grew up in the industrial Midwest literally in the shadow of broken-down factories from car companies that did not survive into the turn of the century because they didn’t keep up with the times,” added Buttigieg. Brennan continued, “Many of those autoworkers are concerned electric vehicles require fewer humans to manufacture,” she said. Buttigieg’s response was that Biden was focused on making the “EV revolution” an “American-led” one. “Because of these tariffs we’re talking about that President Biden says he’s going to roll out?” Brennan asked. “Well, also just making sure we invest in America’s capacity. Making sure that we are on-shoring or friend-shoring the materials and the processing of what goes into these EVs,” said Buttigieg. “Making sure that America masters these processes because, look, there’s no way that we’re going to get to the middle of this century with the technology that we counted on a century ago.” “Now there are, obviously, a lot of voices here in Washington who are interested in keeping the status quo.” “(Trump) says it’s going to be one of the first things he does, if he’s reelected,” Brennan responded. “[Trump] would be happy to see Americans trapped with dirty and expensive fuels. The reality, and I know he’s made a lot of promises to the oil and gas CEOs about some of the favours that he believes his administration will deliver for them,” said Buttigieg. “But it obviously is resonating for him because he wouldn’t bring it up so frequently if there wasn’t some anxiety that he’s tapping into,” replied Brennan. Daily Caller reports data from Gallup shows American ownership of EVs is up 4% from last year, but “fewer Americans are indicating they might consider buying an EV in the future.” “In 2023, 4% of Americans owned EVs, 12% stated they were “seriously considering buying” and 43% stated they “might consider in future” while 41% noted they would not be buying an EV, according to Gallup,” reports Daily Caller. “Data from 2024 indicates that 7% currently own an EV, 9% are “seriously considering buying” and 35% “might consider in future” while 48% stated they would not buy one.” During the interview, Brennan also quizzed Buttigieg about the questionable number of EV chargers that have been built at a cost of US$7.5 billion of taxpayers' money.
