The vast majority of likely Michigan voters oppose the government-mandated transition to electric vehicles, and they plan to support politicians who vow to fight back, according to a new poll.
In March, the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency finalized new emissions standards for light-duty vehicles produced between 2027 and 2032 that would effectively ban all current models of gas vehicles.
The intent is to push the current 8% vehicle sales market share for electric vehicles to a majority of new cars sold by 2030, but a new survey from the National Federation of Independent Business in Michigan shows the bulk of the state’s voters are not on board.
Sixty-three percent of the 584 likely 2024 general election voters surveyed by Remington Research Group between June 29 and July 1 told pollsters they oppose gas vehicle bans, while 68% said a candidate’s position on stopping the transition “is an important factor in their vote.”
A total of 57% Michiganders polled contend the United States is heading in the wrong direction.
“This polling makes one thing clear; Michiganders know that America is on the wrong track. The only thing Washington is delivering for them are burdensome regulations and failed, unpopular policies,” Amanda Fisher, NFIB’s Michigan state director, said in a prepared statement. “Leaders in Washington (can we add ‘and in Lansing’? No worries if not) should stand up for small business and end harmful regulations like the EPA’s gas car ban.
“It’s time to reverse course before it’s too late,” she said.
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Proponents of the EPA regulations have disputed that the more stringent emission threshold of 85 grams per mile equates to a ban on gas powered vehicles, but the American Petroleum Institute notes “today, only EVs and five plug in hybrid (PHEV) meet the 82 grams/mile threshold.
“No gas, diesel or traditional hybrids come close,” according to API’s “Fast Facts” on the regulations.
“As much as the president and EPA claim to have ‘eased’ their approach, nothing could be further from the truth,” API CEO Mike Sommers and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers CEO Chet Thompson said in joint statement on the new EPA standards when they were approved in March.
“This regulation will make new gas-powered vehicles unavailable or prohibitively expensive for most Americans,” the statement read. “For them, this wildly unpopular policy is going to feel and function like a ban.”
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Polling from Ipsos conducted on behalf of API in February shows 75% of Americans, including 56% of Democrats, oppose government regulations that would ban internal combustion and hybrid vehicles, while 82% support an “all-of-the-above strategy” for U.S. Energy policy.
In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and her Democratic allies that control the legislature have instead taken an all-in approach to EVs, doling out billions in taxpayer subsidies to support the industry and setting a goal of 2 million EVs on the state’s roads by 2030.
Through the first quarter of 2024, Michigan had a mere 46,792 registered EVs, or 2% of Whitmer’s goal. To get to 2 million, the Great Lakes State would need to register about 29,000 EVs every month for the next 67 months.
Recent sales data and the June results of a monthly survey of West Michigan businesses conducted by Grand Valley State University suggest that’s unlikely.
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“This year, the numbers are slowing,” Tim Nash, auto expert and director of McNair Center, told WWMT last week, noting electric accounted for an underwhelming 7% of vehicles sold in the U.S. last year. “We are running on an annualized rate of 6.8%, so that is a decline in electric vehicles overall.”
Brian Long, director of supply management research at GVSU’s Seidman College of Business, told GVNext June results of a monthly survey of local businesses showed declines in two key metrics indicate “over the longer term, production is going to drop.”
The situation is creating a backlog of electric vehicles on dealer lots, an issue that’s expected to have a ripple effect on local manufacturers, according to the college news site.
“West Michigan’s largest cyclical industry is automotive, and we don’t assemble cars in West Michigan, but we have numerous firms that produce components and complete assemblies like seats and dashboards, MacPherson struts and those kinds of things,” Long said. “Especially for the firms that are supplying EVs, the news of the dealer lots starting to fill with an overflow of EVs is certainly not good news.”
Other troubling signs for the EV industry include Ford’s loss of $132,000 on each of the 10,000 EVs the company sold last quarter, the company’s plans to scale back an EV battery plant in Marshall by $1 billion, a recent survey showing buyer’s remorse among 46% of EV owners, and a Bridge Michigan analysis showing $1 billion in Michigan taxpayer subsidies paid out so far has created only 200 jobs out of 12,000 promised.