President Joe Biden’s $20 billion EV fleet order
New US President Joe Biden has put his country’s money where his mouth is, declaring the entire federal government automotive fleet will swap to electrical vehicles.
That, folks, is a whopping 650,000 EVs.
Imagine being the salesman taking that fleet order. You’d get a bonus that month!
The move to EVs underlines the new Democrat president’s commitment to addressing the climate crisis, a direct contrast with his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.
The US government fleet covers everything from postal delivery vans to army trucks, so Biden’s commitment is mammoth.
Not only does Biden want to swap to electric, he wants the vehicles purchased to be made in the USA, right down to key parts like engines, steel and glass that are sometimes made abroad and installed in vehicles on American assembly lines.
“The federal government also owns an enormous fleet of vehicles, which we’re going to replace with clean electric vehicles made right here in America made by American workers,” Biden said earlier this week as he signed a ‘Buy American’ executive order.
No doubt legacy US auto makers such as General Motors and Ford that are diving into EVs are delighted by the news (General Motors is transitioning to a wholly zero-emissions lineup and Ford now sells the Mach-E, an electric SUV version of its iconic Mustang).
So will be a legion of American EV specialists and newcomers led by Tesla, Rivian, Lordstown and Lucid.
One of the first fleets to be address will be the US postal service, which is already overdue to replace its ancient fleet. Nowadays they have a tendency to catch on fire. The tender for new vehicles has been delayed by the coronavirus.
While there was no timeline declared for US government fleet’s move from ICE to EVs it would clearly take years.
But it would clearly be a significant contributor to emissions reduction as well as a symbolic of the fight Bidens’s new government has embraced to reduce global warming rates.
As of 2019, the U.S. government owned 645,000 vehicles that were driven 4.5 billion miles consuming 375 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel, according to the General Services Administration. The US government spent US$4.4 billion on federal vehicle costs in 2019.
Of US-government vehicles, just 3215 were electric vehicles as of July 2020, GSA said.
It is estimated the cost of the changeover could be US$20 billion ($25.8 billion) or more.
Biden backs new consumer rebates to replace old, less-efficient vehicles with newer electric vehicles and incentives for manufacturers to build or retool factories to assemble EVs and parts.
The president also vows to build 550,000 EV charging stations and spend more in clean energy research.
As EVcentral reported recently Biden’s Special Envoy on climate change John Kerry said the changeover to EVs is not happening quickly enough.
In fact, he said it needed to happen 22 times faster!
