Many of the biggest automobile sellers in the United States have announced plans to make federal tax credits for EVs visible at the point of sale.
At a meeting of White House officials, Treasury Department leaders, and auto industry insiders, numerous companies made commitments to strengthen their support of the 25E Clean Vehicle Tax Credit, the $4,000 credit that drivers who purchase used electric vehicles can claim through the Inflation Reduction Act, according to Environment+Energy Leader.
More than 13,000 auto dealerships registered to bring that $4,000 tax credit to customers upfront when they purchase used EVs, rather than making buyers wait until tax season to claim their rebates — a move that's already proved popular with drivers, as 90% of eligible purchasers indicated they'd rather take same-day cash savings than later tax credits.
Any EV purchaser who buys a used EV and makes less than $75,000 a year (or is part of a married couple that files jointly and makes less than $150,000 a year) can claim the $4,000 credit. EV buyers have already saved over $850 million from this initiative in 2024 alone, per Environment+Energy Leader.
Additionally, major companies agreed to introduce measures and features that make the tax credit more accessible and visible to customers. For example, CarMax plans to add a badge on its website that will clearly show which EVs qualify for the tax credit, and Carvana will let users see their potential savings before they finalize their purchases, according to Environment+Energy Leader.
Numerous other companies will enact similar measures to make the tax credit more noticeable and approachable for drivers.
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Making the federal tax credit even easier to claim can only help the EV market — and, in turn, help the environment. EVs require substantially less maintenance, are far cheaper to refuel, and have a minuscule pollution footprint compared to their traditional gas-guzzling counterparts, which means the growing adoption of EVs is a win for both the planet and people who want to save money on transportation.
Other policies that help attract buyers to EVs are being promoted in Minnesota, Colorado, and California. For more information on how to approach an EV purchase, visit TCD's EV guide.
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Using your phone in the car can be risky, but Android Auto offers a safer alternative. Its clear interface is perfect for driving, but did you know you can make it even better? Here’s how to set up Android Auto for your needs and keep your eyes on the road.
Simplify Your Drive: Customize Android Auto for Safety and Ease
Why Customize?
By default, Android Auto shows recently used apps. This might not be ideal. Important apps like navigation or music could be hidden, making you scroll while driving.
Customizing the app menu lets you put the apps you use most at the top, for faster access with fewer distractions.
Taking Control: A Step-by-Step Guide
Many people don’t realize you can change the app menu on your phone, not in the car. Here’s how:
Open Settings on your phone and find Connected devices.
Tap Connection preferences, then Android Auto.
Select Customize launcher. Here you can control your app icons.
Choose Order application menu. You have two options:
Alphabetical (Default): This might bury important apps.
Custom Order: This lets you arrange the apps however you like.
If you pick Custom Order, you’ll see a list of compatible apps. You can:
Remove unused apps: Games, news apps, or anything you wouldn’t use while driving can be unchecked to hide them.
Rearrange your top picks: Hold and drag app icons to change their order. Put navigation, music, or messaging apps at the top for easy access.
Benefits of a Customized Menu
Faster access: Get to the apps you need quickly, with less searching.
Fewer distractions: A cleaner interface means less clutter and a safer drive.
Improved safety: By simplifying things, you keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel.
Beyond the App Menu: More Tips
Use voice commands: Talk to Google Assistant to control things like navigation and music, all hands-free.
Do Not Disturb: Turn on Do Not Disturb mode on your phone to minimize notifications while driving.
Know your car: Check your car’s manual or online resources to learn about its specific Android Auto features.
By customizing Android Auto and using these tips, you can create a safer and more enjoyable driving experience.
Simplifying Your Android Auto Experience: A Guide to Customization
Making Android Auto Your Own
Customizing the Android Auto app menu can significantly improve your driving experience. But for those who want to go even further, there are exciting possibilities! (Remember, some options might require extra tools or adjustments, so be cautious and make sure they work well with your device and car system.)
Taking Control with Third-Party Launchers
Want more control over how Android Auto looks and works? Check out third-party launcher apps! These launchers can let you change app icons, add widgets, and even completely redesign the layout for a truly personalized experience. But choose wisely! Pick launchers with a good reputation for being stable and secure, as some can cause issues or slow things down.
Automating Actions for Power Users
If you’re comfortable with tech, tools like AutoInput and Tasker can automate things within Android Auto. Imagine your navigation app starting automatically when you connect your phone, or launching your favorite Spotify playlist with a custom voice command. While powerful, these tools require some knowledge of automation scripting and might not be for everyone.
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Safety First: Essential Tips for Customization
Safety should always be your top priority when customizing Android Auto. Here are some key points to remember:
Minimize Distractions: The goal is to make driving safer. While customization can make things easier, avoid anything that might take your attention away from the road. Stay away from complicated layouts or flashy animations.
Trustworthy Sources: If you’re considering third-party launchers or automation tools, only download them from trusted sources like the Google Play Store. Read reviews and check ratings to see if they’re stable and compatible with your Android Auto version and car system.
Focus on Usefulness: Look for features that make driving safer and more convenient. Avoid anything that makes things too complex or encourages multitasking behind the wheel.
The Exciting Future of Android Auto Customization
As Android Auto gets better, we can expect even more ways to customize it! Here’s a glimpse of what might be coming:
Built-in Launcher Customization:Google might add the ability to change the launcher layout directly within the Android Auto app. This could be a safer and easier way to personalize things compared to using third-party solutions.
Smarter with AI: Android Auto could use artificial intelligence to personalize the interface based on how you use it. Imagine the system automatically suggesting frequently used apps or anticipating your navigation needs based on your driving habits.
Seamless Car Integration: Future versions of Android Auto might work even more closely with your car’s infotainment system. This could allow things like showing app information on the car’s heads-up display (HUD) or controlling apps with steering wheel buttons for a truly smooth experience.
By understanding the current customization options and looking ahead to what’s coming, you can make Android Auto a safe, efficient, and personalized driving companion!
Getting the Most Out of Android Auto: Performance, Compatibility, and Alternatives
Want to enjoy a smooth, safe, and personalized ride with Android Auto? Here are some easy tips to keep in mind:
Keeping Things Smooth
Less is More: Lots of cool customizations can slow down your phone. If Android Auto feels sluggish, try simplifying your setup. Lighter customization options might be the answer.
Check Compatibility: Before making big changes, make sure everything works well together. This includes your phone, Android Auto version, and car’s entertainment system. Online forums and user communities for Android Auto are great places to find compatibility info and troubleshooting help.
Updates Matter: Keep your Android Auto app and phone software up-to-date. Updates often fix problems, make things run faster, and add new features. This keeps your system secure and running at its best.
Beyond Android Auto
There are other options for in-car entertainment besides Android Auto:
Apple CarPlay: CarPlay is for Apple users. It works like Android Auto, but with features like iPhone navigation, music, and calling. You can use Siri voice commands for hands-free control, keeping your focus on the road.
AAMirror (Alternative App): AAMirror lets you see your entire phone screen on your car’s display. This gives you access to any app, but it might not be as safe or easy to use while driving as Android Auto or CarPlay. It’s also important to be aware that looking at your phone screen too much can be distracting.
Choosing the Right Fit
Knowing these options helps you pick the platform that best suits your devices, what you like, and safety. The goal is to have a simple and distraction-free in-car experience that makes your drives better and keeps everyone safe.
This rewrite uses simpler words, shorter sentences, and avoids technical jargon. It also focuses on the benefits for the user and emphasizes safety. This should make the text easier to understand for a wider audience.
Disclaimer: We may be compensated by some of the companies whose products we talk about, but our articles and reviews are always our honest opinions. For more details, you can check out our editorial guidelines and learn about how we use affiliate links.
Tractor may continue their downturn, witnessing a 20–25% year-on-year decline in retail sales, but the expectations of better sequential growth are the only positive.
Both M&M and Escorts experienced a decline in growth during the previous fiscal and have projected a recovery in the second half of the current fiscal. They are hoping for positive shifts from good monsoons, rural recovery, and budget support for their customers in July.
Notable decreases in states like Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, where the monsoon has not yet begun, are negative, and commentary on states like Karnataka, where demand has been subdued, will be key post-quarter-one results.
Mahindra has been strong in maintaining market share with timely launches and product acceptance for brands like Oja, while Escorts is expecting better performance in states like Maharashtra and Karnataka this year.
EV giant Tesla IncTSLA has lost its edge in terms of vehicle quality over EVs made by rival OEMs, as per automotive industry consultant JD Power.
What Happened: As per J.D. Power’s 2024 U.S. Initial Quality Study, gas and diesel-powered vehicles have an average of 180 problems per 100 vehicles, much lower than EVs which face 266 problems per 100 (PP100) vehicles on average.
"Owners of cutting edge, tech-filled BEVs and PHEVs are experiencing problems that are of a severity level high enough for them to take their new vehicle into the dealership at a rate three times higher than that of gas-powered vehicle owners," Frank Hanley, senior director of auto benchmarking at J.D. Power, said.
Tesla Drops Lead: Tesla and Rivian’s quality now stands at 266 PP100, implying that the quality disparity between Tesla and non-Tesla EVs is closed this year. Tesla had performed better than others in the past.
The reason, the consultant says, is the removal of traditional feature controls such as turn signals and wiper stalks, which were not well received by customers.
Tesla did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comment.
While Tesla started making changes in design to its Model S and X vehicles initially, this year it introduced changes to its cheapest offering, the Model 3 sedan, Bloomberg’s Keith Naughton said on television. The changes are now impacting the mainstream buyer and the mainstream buyers do not like their turn signal stocks to be replaced by buttons on the steering wheel, he said.
However, the buttons by itself do not pose a problem, the auto reporter said. “The buttons work if you find them but how do you find them when there is an emergency situation,” Naughton said in an episode of Bloomberg Technology on Friday.
Quality Ranking Across Auto Brands: Overall, JD Power ranked Ram the highest among auto brands in initial quality with a score of 149 problems per hundred vehicles. Ram is followed closely by GM’s Chevrolet and South Korean automaker Hyundai.
Among premium brands, however, Porsche ranks at the top in initial quality, followed by Toyota’s Lexus and Hyundai’s Genesis.
Model 3 Refresh: Tesla unveiled the refreshed Model 3 in the U.S. in January. The company initially listed two variants of the car, namely the rear-wheel drive and long-range. The refreshed Model 3 Performance variant was added to the order website months later in April.
Tesla reported an 8.5% year-on-year decline in first-quarter deliveries with 386,810 vehicles delivered across the world, marking the first time Tesla has reported a drop in quarterly deliveries in about four years since the second quarter of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted production. The company attributed the decline in volume partially to the production ramp of the refreshed Model 3 at its Fremont factory.
Check out more of Benzinga’s Future Of Mobility coverage by following this link.
DETENTION CENTER BUT HAS BEEN RELEASED ALSO NEW AT 11. NEW PHOTOS SHOWING THE CAR DEPUTIES SAY IS CONNECTED TO A CHURCH. BREAK-IN DETECTIVES ARE TRYING TO IDENTIFY THE MEN IN THESE PHOTOS. DEPUTIES SAY THEY WERE IN THIS CAR WITH DISTINCT PAINT ON THE HOOD. IT’S A GREEN HONDA ACCORD. DEPUTIES SAY THEY ARE INVESTIGATING A BR
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Photos show distinctly painted car in Anderson County, SC auto break-ins at church, deputies say
Two men were caught on camera in connection with auto break-ins at an Anderson County, South Carolina church, deputies say.(Above video is the Wednesday morning headlines for June 26, 2024.)The Anderson County Sheriff's Office released photos of the men and the car they were driving.Deputies said the break-in happened at Whitefield Baptist Church, in Belton.The car is a green Honda Accord with artwork on the hood.Anyone with information is asked to call the sheriff's office, at 864-260-4400 and reference case number 2024-08055.More trending stories:Full election results for South Carolina primary runoff electionFather, son arrested after deadly Greenville hotel shooting, police sayWoman sentenced to prison after embezzling millions from employer, officials say
ANDERSON COUNTY, S.C. —
Two men were caught on camera in connection with auto break-ins at an Anderson County, South Carolina church, deputies say.
(Above video is the Wednesday morning headlines for June 26, 2024.)
The Anderson County Sheriff's Office released photos of the men and the car they were driving.
Anderson County Sheriff's Office
Deputies said the break-in happened at Whitefield Baptist Church, in Belton.
The car is a green Honda Accord with artwork on the hood.
Anyone with information is asked to call the sheriff's office, at 864-260-4400 and reference case number 2024-08055.
A study on loans for buying automobiles in the United States has found that weaker consumer budgets are negatively impacting loan payments for some borrowers, credit reporting agency TransUnion said on Thursday.
Big-ticket items
US consumers are continuing to hold back on big-ticket purchases and being careful with their spending amid inflationary pressures and the Federal Reserve's monetary policy path.
The TransUnion (TRU) study showed continued declines in auto-loan applications since the pandemic.
Despite the recent recovery in supply chain shortages, elevated inflation and higher interest rates that followed have put consumers in a tight financial bind, according to the study.
TransUnion said first-quarter auto delinquencies that are 60 days or more past due date have risen to 1.33% from 1.19% a year earlier.
Additional monthly payments
Many borrowers have been taking on additional monthly payments to compensate for higher debt levels due to budget constraints, and some are further holding off on new auto leases and purchases, according to the study.
Increased pressures on consumer affordability and spending will further drive a slowdown in an already sluggish auto origination market, TransUnion said.
(Reporting by Aatreyee Dasgupta in Bengaluru; Editing by Mohammed Safi Shamsi)
President Joe Biden sketched out his vision for the future of America’s auto industry during a visit to Detroit inlate 2021. And he couldn’t have picked a more appropriate spot to do it.
He spoke on the assembly floor of “Factory Zero,” a plant that General Motors had just retooled in order to produce electric vehicles (EVs) and their batteries. Factory Zero sits on the site of an oldChrysler plantthat during World War II supplied the “Arsenal of Democracy.” Now, Biden said, he wanted to enlist the auto industry in a different kind of war ― a war against climate change ― while providing reliable middle-class jobs and restoring some of the industry’s lost global stature.
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“I want you to feel the way I feel: pride in what we can do when we’re together as the United States of America,” Biden said. “And it starts here in Detroit.”
Many of Biden’s predecessors made similar vows. Few (maybe none?) followed up with such a flurry of regulatory action or by signing anything as ambitious as the 2022Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Today that law is pouring tens of billions of dollars into EV subsidies, just like Biden promised, as part of what is arguably the single biggest bet on industrial policy in recent American history.
The effectis not hard to spot.Facilitiessuch as Factory Zero are under construction or in operation across the industrial Midwest and a new “battery belt” in the South. TheUnited Auto Workers(UAW) has won the right to organize in many of these plants and just a few weeks ago secured anew contractat an Ohio facility that should help set new standards nationwide.EV salescontinue to go up.
But sales aren’t increasing as quickly as analysts or the industrypredicted. The UAW is stillstrugglingto organize outside of the Big Three (General Motors, Ford and Stellatis), whether it’s at domestic challengers, such as Tesla, or foreign-owned “transplants,” including Hyundai. And for all the talk of American automakers recapturing their global swagger, it’sChinathat has leapfrogged the rest of the world to become the leader in EV production. Last month, Biden enacted a series ofhigh tariffson Chinese EVs to block them from the U.S. market.
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The possibility of China capturing U.S. sales has gotten a lot ofattentionfrom former President Donald Trump, who mentions it constantly on the campaign trail, though in Trump’s view, the problem isn’t just what’s happening in Beijing. It’s also what’s happening in Detroit, which, to be clear, he blames on Washington.
President Joe Biden speaks at General Motors' Factory Zero electric vehicle assembly plant on Nov. 17, 2021, in Detroit. Biden touted the benefits of the infrastructure bill he signed two days earlier, which would add electric vehicle charging stations around the country as part of its $1 trillion allocation.
Nic Antaya/Getty Images
Trump hasattackedBiden’s EV push as a boondoggle that is forcing American companies to manufacture unprofitable, undesirable vehicles. He hasn’t spelled out exactly what chain of events he envisions as a result — this is Trump, after all — but in his speeches and interviews, he has said it will be a “bloodbath” for American workers. Trump has pledged to reverse Biden’s policies, if elected, while taking even more aggressive action to stop imports.
The debate over EVs hasn’t gotten much attention in the national media. In an election offering such stark contrasts of presidential temperament, and such fraught possibilities for American democracy, arguments about corporate subsidies, trade barriers and carbon emissions don’t exactly light up social media. But this debate’s outcome could have a big effect on the American economy and middle class, not to mention the planet.
The electoral stakes are high, too, and not just because so many of those manufacturing jobs are inMidwest swing states. With Trump’s appeals to red-blooded Americans who want big gas-burning trucks and Biden’s pitch to the hard-hat crowd, the EV debate has become yet another proxy fight in the nation’s culture wars — and a test of who really cares about the working class.
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How Biden Is Trying To Promote EVs
An easy way to think aboutBiden’s EV pushis as a series of negative and positive financial incentives.
The negative incentives include new regulations that, taken together, penalize automakers if they produce too many gas-guzzling cars and trucks. The positive incentives come from those EV subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act, some of which go to the manufacturers and others that go to consumers. The benefit for buyers is available at the point of sale, so that it functions as discounts on the sticker price, as much as $7,500 per vehicle.
The economic logic of this approach is that it closes the price gap between gas and electric vehicles, thus capturing the invisible cost of pollution. But ― and this is key ― the subsidies don’t simply underwrite green transportation. They underwrite green transportation producedhere. Only vehicles and parts made primarily in North America qualify.
Not so long ago, that would have been more controversial, with economists in both parties wary of having the government tamper so directly in markets. But the auto industry has gotten help before, most recently in 2009, during the financial crisis, when the Obama administrationrescuedGM and Chrysler from liquidation in order to save a key piece of America’s manufacturing base and spare the Midwest more dire economic conditions.
Biden’s team has those same considerations in mind. They also talk more openly ― and enthusiastically ― about the need to level the playing field internationally, given how much support automakers in other countries get from their governments. That was true in the late 20th century, when Asian and European competitors benefited from government assistance. And it’s been true in the early 21st century, though now the bigger international threat comes from China.
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Thestoryof how China came to dominate world EV production is actually a pretty good case study in how a government can grow an industry with enough determination and patience. Beijing first identified electrification as a goal back in 2001, then spent the next decade pursuing that goal through direct subsidies, favorable bank loans and mass purchasing by municipal governments.
Today, Chinese firms lead the world in vehicle and battery production ― and, many analysts feel, in technology as well. The showpiece Chinese vehicle, from a company calledBYD, is a sedan that would probably list for about$20,000in the U.S. It’s already selling well in Europe, where officials recently raised tariffs in order to stop the Chinese imports from getting even more market share. Biden’s new Chinese EV tariffs are designed to stop them from getting a foothold here.
The hope is that these trade barriers, along with the emission standards and subsidies, buy American companies enough time to develop the kind of manufacturing and design expertise that would enable them to compete with foreign competitors.Ilaria Mazzocco, a senior fellow at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, has studied China’s EV industry as closely as anybody in the U.S. She sees many parallels between what Chinese officials did in the past and what the Biden administration is trying to do now.
“The IRA probably took some inspiration from the Chinese playbook in some ways,” she told HuffPost.
But, Mazzocco noted, the playbook is easier to run in an authoritarian country. “The big advantage that China has when it comes to things like industrial policy is that it has a policy stability,” Mazzocco said. “If Xi Jinping decides he wants to back something, you can be sure that it’s going to stay the same for a certain amount of time.”
No such guarantees exist in the U.S., where political opposition matters, and, at the moment, could be months away from taking power.
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What Trump Is Saying About Biden’s EV Push
Trump has made plain his opposition to Biden’s EV support, in speeches and in interviews ― and in the “Agenda 47” section of his campaign website, where a page dedicated to the auto industry pledges to roll back Biden’s new emission standards and “stop the flow of American tax dollars that are subsidizing Chinese electric vehicle battery companies through Joe Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act.”
Trump hasn’t offered more detail about his plans or his thinking, except to say he’d also block Chinese imports. And a campaign spokesperson declined to answer queries from HuffPost. But some conservative economists have fleshed out the arguments for why, in their view, Biden’s EV agenda is bad for America.
One of them isDiana Furchtgott-Roth, who served in every Republican administration since Ronald Reagan’s and now leads the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment. Furchtgott-Roth has a record of skepticism toward climate change predictions and environmental initiatives. But the thrust of her case against Biden’s policy is that it’s foolish ― and ultimately destructive ― for the government to put its thumb on the scale of a product that many Americans may not want.
Former President Donald Trump speaks on June 15 at The People's Convention, hosted by Turning Point Action at The Huntington Place in Detroit. Trump has vowed to turn back President Joe Biden's support for electric vehicles if he's elected president again in November.
Adam J. Dewey/Anadolu via Getty Images
“Electric vehicles are great for some people, especially for people who have garages and can charge them overnight, and people who don’t have to drive very far during the day,” Furchtgott-Roth told HuffPost. “But if you take, say, a handyman who lives on his pickup truck and doesn’t have a garage where he can charge his truck, then it very much increases his costs by requiring him to have, say, a Ford Lightning instead of a Ford F-150. It’s a more expensive vehicle. He can’t charge it in this home. And he can’t stop for one or two hours out of the day to charge it up, because that impedes with his business.”
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Strictly speaking, nothing Biden has done would prohibit Ford from continuing to manufacture F-150s or prevent those handymen from buying them. But the whole point of his agenda is to change the financial equation so that it’s a lot more favorable to electric alternatives, and that’s precisely the problem from Furchtgott-Roth’s perspective.
Push the manufacturers to hit hard EV targets, she warned, and American manufacturers will end up with vehicles they can’t sell ― a recipe for losses and eventually a dramatic downsizing of American industry. If that happens, she said, foreign competitors are likely to fill the void, and that includes Chinese companies like BYD.
“I think it’s a forced march towards EVs; it’s not a natural progression,” Furchtgott-Roth said. “We’re better off letting the market sort itself out.”
What Industry Analysts Are Saying About EVs
EV skeptics can point to a number of recent developments to bolster their case, starting with first-quarter 2024 sales that came in below projections. Tesla has beencutting pricesto reduce big inventories whileFordlast year scaled plans for a massive, highly touted battery factory under construction in Michigan.
Even EV enthusiasts acknowledge that the market is in a new, more difficult phase, when manufacturers have to reach mainstream consumers still anxious about range and the availability of commercial charging.
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“The risk of inaction is much higher than it used to be. The transition is going to happen.”
- Corey Cantor, BloombergNEF
But EV sales are still rising, in absolute terms and relative to other kinds of vehicles, and in just the last few weeks, Bank of America, Bloomberg NEF and Cox Automotive issued annual reports projecting EVs would keep gaining market share. “We have EV share of sale[s] growing to 29% by 2027, so that’s about one in three vehicles,”Corey Cantor, a senior auto industry analyst at BloombergNEF, told HuffPost. “That’s pretty good,”
Cantor said he and other analysts feel confident about EV growth because the vehicles have a lot going for them, including not just freedom from high gas bills but also, in many cases, “a better ride experience.” EVs are already on their way to taking over markets overseas, Cantor noted, and the products will only get better as companies innovate ― although, he cautioned, it’s an open question how big a part American firms in general play in that process, especially if they lose government support.
“The risk of inaction is much higher than it used to be,” said Cantor. “The transition is going to happen. And I think, if anything, that makes it much harder for the U.S. to not have those policies in place.”
The possibility of falling further behind Chinese and other competitors is precisely why former Biden advisers like MIT Innovation Fellow Brian Deese say it’s Trump’s promise to yank federal EV support that represents the greatest threat to American companies and, ultimately, American workers.
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Deese, who knows a thing or two about the industry after managing the Obama administration’s rescue, told HuffPost that “the economic logic to invest in those things globally is only going to increase, but the economics of making those investments in the United States would be ripped out” if Trump were to reverse Biden’s policies.
How The Future Might Unfold
Even with government help, the transformation will be difficult for the Big Three and their suppliers ― who, politically, are the ones both Biden and Trump are trying so hard to court.
Nowadays the companies focus on relatively expensive trucks and SUVs, the vehicles that generate the biggest profits, and even their EV offerings have focused on the high-end market. GM is about to roll out a line of lower-priced EV products, including a revival of its discontinued (but popular) Bolt. It’s an open question how well that will go, and whether Ford and Stellantis (the conglomerate that owns Chrysler) can make inroads of their own.
Other challenges await. Qualifying for the maximum EV tax credits will eventually require relying more on batteries produced domestically. But right now U.S. companies don’t have either the raw materials or know-how to do that. Those new UAW agreements will raise worker pay, but that will also add to EV costs at a time when the companies are learning how to make the vehicles profitably.
“I think it's a forced march towards EVs; it's not a natural progression.”
- Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Heritage Foundation
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And then there’s the complexity of dealing with China.
In both the Biden and Trump camps, advisers and supporters say the U.S. can’t rely too heavily on a potential adversary for vehicles or for production know-how. They also say it’s important to prevent espionage and data stealing, which could become easier if Chinese companies and vehicles gain a big U.S. presence.
But the Chinese have gotten so faraheadin EV technology that the only way to catch up may be to copy and learn from them. And that may only be possible through joint ventures. This was a big part of how the Big Three caught up to Asian and European competitors the last time they fell behind, during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, when they were slow to meet demand for smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.
Memories of that era are also among the reasons why former Biden officials like Sonia Aggarwal, who was special assistant to the president for climate policy, think it’s so important for government to boost U.S. firms today.
“I would say we tried in this country to ignore where the world was going in the auto industry before,” Aggarwal, who is now chief executive officer of the think tank Energy Innovation, told HuffPost. “It didn’t work out very well for us when we did that.”
Why Judgment, Values Matter As Much As Agenda
Biden’s EV push will require constant adjustment based on changing circumstances, as any such enterprise would. The same goes for Trump’s preferred alternative. Pulling back on EVs may sound like a simple matter of taking away Biden’s regulations and subsidies, but every one of those moves would require countless decisions about details ― and constant attention to how changes were playing out in the real world.
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All of that suggests a president’s temperament, judgment and priorities matter as much as their policies. And here the differences between Biden and Trump are even starker.
Trump has tried to turn EVs into a symbol of cultural liberalism ― of weakness or wokeness, or both ― while portraying himself as a champion of working-class Americans. But Trump’s record shows he’s better at making promises to autoworkers and their families than delivering on them. While he was president, he vowed to save a storied GM factory inLordstown, Ohio. The plant closed anyway. He talked about championing American workers, then filled agencies like the National Labor Relations Board withanti-union appointees.
These developments happened against the backdrop of a Trump governing agenda that shifted money away from lower- and middle-income Americans and toward the rich ― most obviously through the 2017 Republicantax cutthat Trump promoted and signed into law. Another Trump term could mean more of the same.
The centerpiece of Trump’s 2024 economic agenda is an across-the-board tariff that he has suggested would replace the income tax. In addition to creating massive new deficits, such a change would function like another big tax cut for the wealthy, since they spend less of their money on goods that the tariffs would affect.
President Joe Biden speaks at a UAW picket line at a General Motors Service Parts Operations plant on Sept. 26, 2023, in Belleville, Michigan. Biden privately was also pushing the Big Three automakers to bring a better deal to the union.
JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
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It’s not even clear the tariffs would help the auto industry or its workers, who Trump says would be the primary beneficiaries. Unlike Biden’s new tariffs, which target just one country and one set of products, Trump’s would apply to all imports, including those from friendly trading partners, and not just to vehicles but to the parts that go into vehicles. That could make all cars and trucks in the U.S. a lot more expensive while wreaking havoc with supply chains based on long-established, carefully negotiated purchases of materials from abroad.
Biden’s governing record suggests a very different set of priorities, whether it’s his broadeconomic agendaof raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy while providing more assistance to the poor and middle class or, more specifically, what he’s done for the auto industry and its workers.
Probably the best example is how he conducted himself last fall, when the UAW was on strike. Privately, he pressed the Big Three to give labor abetter deal. Publicly he joined striking workers on thepicket line― something, according to historians, no president had done before.
The problems facing America’s automakers, like the problems facing the planet, are difficult to solve. No president is going to make all the right calls. But some have records showing they genuinely care about the industry and its workers. Some don’t.
How voters assess those records could determine who wins in November. As Biden said in 2021, it all starts in Detroit.
