Consider This from NPR - The EPA Wants Millions More EVs On The Road. Should You Buy One?

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled ambitious new emissions rules this week. The agency estimates car makers would need up to 67% of their new vehicle sales to be electric by 2032 in order to comply with the stricter standards.Michelle Krebs, executive analyst with Cox Automotive says the changes "reinvent the vehicle" and will require a reinvention of the auto industry.In the face of these impending changes, Keith Barry, an automotive reporter for Consumer Reports, walks through what prospective electric vehicle buyers should be considering.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. A lot of people who buy electric cars know that they want an electric car. And it's not necessarily to say that they're driving an electric vehicle. It's to reduce their carbon footprint for their commute. It just works. And frankly, a lot of people are tired of going to the gas station.

That is Justin Jackson, General Sales Manager at Smart Motors Toyota in Madison, Wisconsin. Every once in a while, though, a customer drives off the lot in an electric vehicle that wasn't on their radar when they first walked in. Jackson says it happened with one customer just last week. When she came to pick up her car, I mean, the smile on her face ear to ear. And she said, I'm a little nervous about learning about this car, but I'm really excited to have this car. Her old car was a RAV4. She was planning to buy another, but the wait list was really long. So Jackson says he walked her through similar options, talking through what she needed in a car.

And eventually, she decided that Toyota's small electric SUV, the BZ4X, was the car for her. Her commute is about roughly 12 miles a day. She typically says when she takes trips, she flies. So it fits her lifestyle to the T. And with that, she joined the small but growing ranks of electric vehicle owners. The thing is, for the U.S. to meet its climate emissions targets, there need to be a lot more stories like this one, like millions more. New emissions rules unveiled by the EPA this week will mean car makers need something like 67% of their sales to be EVs. And that may be tough at Smart Motors in Madison. New and used, we've sold about 20 this year. And we've had the ability to sell 20. So we've sold everything we've had. That's 20 out of about 1,000 sales this year.

It could be even tougher at Bird, Colgen, Ford in Waco, Texas. Yeah, I think Waco probably matches what people think of. Waco, Texas, we sell a lot of trucks, Super Duties, F-150s, Expeditions, big vehicles. Claire McDonald's family has been selling Ford since her great-grandfather opened up shop in 1936. She says she does see a lot of interest in the F-150 Lightning, Ford's EV pickup, but electric vehicle sales are still just about 1% of her total. Right now, both Jackson and McDonald say supply is a limiting factor. Both of them have wait lists for electric vehicles.

But they also mentioned a more fundamental issue keeping people out of EVs. I think for us in Texas, it's all about range. It's a big state with a lot of highway driving, a lot of high-speed highway driving. The number one question is range. How much do I get on an electric charge? And it's a tough answer. Jackson says for more people to want to buy electric vehicles, there needs to be a lot more investment in infrastructure.

Obviously, right now, if somebody's low on gas, they just go get gas. There's a gas station on every corner. But right now, there's not a charging station on every corner. So that's my biggest fear with this is, if somebody really wants this vehicle, but it won't fit their lifestyle, they cannot go and purchase this vehicle. Consider this. New EPA regulations would mean a massive increase in electric vehicle sales in less than a decade. Can the industry make it happen? And what do the new rules mean for people in the market for an EV right now? From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang.

It's Friday, April 14th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Just how ambitious are the new auto emissions rules unveiled by the Biden administration this week? Well, you can get a sense of the scale from the questions that reporters asked after EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced the new standards.

Thanks, Administrator. Dave Shepardson from Reuters. Do you think this rule, as Republican critics say, will effectively end the internal combustion engine? The rules will not drive any particular technology out of business, Regan said, but they do propose new stricter tailpipe emission standards for both pollution, the stuff that makes people sick when they breathe it in, and greenhouse gases. For carmakers to meet those standards, the EPA estimates that up to two-thirds of vehicles sold will need to be electric by 2032. Which gets to another question. Basil John with Nexstar. So we want to know, with this announcement that's come through, can you realistically reach this goal in nine years? It's a very large projection of reaching that two-thirds when it's not even at 10% right now.

I believe we can. Environmental groups have praised the move as a crucial step to fighting climate change. Regan said the proposal would reduce CO2 emissions by 7.3 billion tons. That's equivalent to eliminating all greenhouse gas emissions from the entire current United States transportation sector for four years.

And carmakers have been investing big in electric cars already, but to comply with these new standards, they're going to have to speed that up. NPR's Layla Fadl spoke with Michelle Krebs of Cox Automotive about how hard it will be for car companies to meet this goal in just nine years. Is that timeline realistic, especially from the auto industry's perspective? Well, and not just the auto industry part. It's also the consumer part. It's enormously ambitious. You know, we've had previous mandates where like higher fuel economy standards and emission standards, but they were all on gasoline engines, required some tweaking. This reinvents the vehicle. It reinvents how consumers interact with their vehicle. It reimagines the entire

industrial base. So this is a massive change. What would you say are the biggest challenges? Is it making the vehicles, getting people to purchase them? I mean, what are the challenges to get to that number? I think it all lies with the consumer. Indeed, EVs are the fastest selling vehicle category. Last year, they were up 60% over the previous year. We just put out some new numbers that in the first quarter, the U.S. industry sold 258,000. That's the highest we've ever seen, and we anticipate a million. But we sell 14, 15, 16 million vehicles per year, so it's only 7% of all vehicle sales. And this requires a change in consumer behavior. You don't just pull into a gas station and top off your tank. The other big obstacle is they cost more. The average cost of an EV is

$58,000 versus a still high $48,000 for a gas engine vehicle. So that's hard for people. Already vehicles are so expensive right now. And a lot of people plan to drive their car until the wheels fall off. But if the rules change, maybe that's not an option for them. Well, the EPA is arguing that these standards will actually save consumers money. They're saying more than $9,000 over eight years by not buying gas. EVs theoretically have less maintenance because they have less parts, and so they'll save in repair bills. But I don't think really consumers look at it that way. Does this impact auto workers? Yes.

We are seeing automakers build new plants to assemble these vehicles and to build batteries. And it's a mixed bag. There will be new jobs created, but we could lose factory jobs because EVs require fewer people to assemble them. Michelle Krebs is the executive analyst at Cox Automotive. She was speaking to my colleague, Layla Fottle. Before these new rules actually go into effect, there will be a comment period where lots of interested people will weigh in on the feasibility question. But there may also be litigation. The current, much less stringent version of these standards is already being challenged in court by red states led by Texas.

If these new standards do hold, there may be a lot more electric vehicles on the sales lot in the near future. But what if you're in the market for a new car right now and you're curious about an electric vehicle? Is this a good time to buy one? Well, to help us answer that question, I spoke with Keith Berry. He's an autos reporter with Consumer Reports. Welcome. Thanks for having me. So we just heard an analyst say that these EPA changes could, quote, reinvent the vehicle. How do you think it will change the car buying experience? And I mean, how soon? Well, the timeline for this is incredibly fast in an industry as big and as slow as the auto industry.

So the good news, though, is that these rules give some certainty to automakers, and that's what they're looking for when they're trying to determine whether to make investments in EVs and what they need to do. They need to start selling more affordable EVs because you can't get to those numbers selling vehicles that are around $60,000, which is where the average EV is right now. You need more mass market vehicles. And this announcement is giving that certainty and automakers are going to be able to make those changes and make more affordable electric vehicles that will hit more segments of the market. Okay. So for someone who is out there right now thinking about buying an EV,

what would be the biggest reasons to buy one right now? Right now, some of the biggest reasons are those environmental reasons. You know, you have reasons other than cost savings that make an EV good to purchase. You have this incredible performance. You know, these cars are posting zero to 60 times that would have made a, you know, a muscle car make it onto the cover of road and track 15 years ago. And, you know, they're family vehicles. You might save some money on fuel costs as well, because in general, electricity costs less, means that a vehicle costs less to fuel than fueling it with, you know, gasoline or diesel. That's different depending upon the car and depending upon the region of the country. But in general, you'll probably save some money on fuel.

So there are all these great things about the cars themselves, but you'd have to have some money in order to do so. There are only a couple of inexpensive EVs on the market. Okay. Well, besides purchase price and the fact that most purchase prices of EVs out there are pretty high right now. What would be other reasons to potentially wait before getting an electric vehicle? One reason to wait is because there are just going to be more EVs on the market. You know, GM is coming out with some affordable EVs, the Blazer EV, the Equinox EV, they're going to be coming out. Kia has the EV9, which is a three-row SUV. Right now, there aren't really options out there if you're interested in a three-row SUV at

that heart of the market, but there's going to be one soon. So there are going to be more choices. Another reason to wait might be if you don't have a place to charge an EV, either at home, if you have to get a charger installed installed or if you're trying to drive somewhere on, you know, where there just isn't an adequate charging infrastructure. And that's something that they're also going to be massive investments in. And there's that chicken and egg issue too, where, you know, the more EVs that are guaranteed to hit the market, well, that means that there are going to have to be more places for them to be plugged into charge while on a road trip. Well, what if you're out there and you're thinking to yourself,

maybe I should buy a used EV? What are the trade-offs? Well, the biggest trade-off is that there just aren't that many used EVs. EVs are only about a little more than 5% of the new car market now. And they were way less than that last year and the year before and the year before. So if you're looking for an EV, your choices are really slim. There just aren't as many models out there. The good news is that for the first time, buyers have used EVs as long as they meet certain income thresholds, can get a tax credit of up to $4,000. But that's only if you buy a car from a dealership,

and that's only if it's a one-owner vehicle, if it hasn't already been resold. So the car can only get that tax credit once. Now you mentioned tax credits. Of course, tax credits are going to be a factor in the decision for a lot of people. And the government is planning to make an announcement next week on which actual vehicle models qualify for specific tax credits this year. Can you explain more about that? What exactly is happening? And how can people shopping for cars currently navigate through all of that? There are a lot of ways to navigate it. You know, so at Consumer Reports, we have something called our EV incentive finder. You can just plug that into Google and you can, you know, put where you live and the car you're looking for into our site, and it'll show you which federal tax credits, but also some state and local ones.

But starting on April 18th, the $7,500 tax credit is going to be divided into two parts. So for the first half, at least 50% of a vehicle's battery components have to be produced or assembled in North America. For the second half, at least 40% of the critical minerals used in the battery must be extracted or processed in the U.S., or they have to come from a country that's a U.S. free trade agreement partner, which is a list which is changing every day. Oh, my God. Or they have to be made from materials that have been recycled in North America, and these rules get stricter every single year.

Yeah, absolutely. So surely there is a list of exactly which models qualify, right? There is, and it's changing. But even when you look at that, sometimes cars are made in different factories. Sometimes they have batteries from different suppliers. So I know at least one automaker, General Motors, says that they're going to have a website that you can go to, and you can plug in the vehicle identification number

of the individual car you're looking at and see if it qualifies. So, you know, this is really easy for the consumer to figure this out. That was Keith Barry, an autos reporter for Consumer Reports. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Cheng.