In a surprise to nobody, a new poll reveals what the public thinks about the government coerced transition to electric vehicles: most don’t like it.
Napolitan News Service this week posed a couple simple questions to 1,000 registered voters with the polling help of Scott Rasmussen.
“Should the federal government encourage people to buy electric vehicles rather than gas powered vehicles by using regulations and financial incentives? Or, should the government simply let consumers decide what cars best meet their needs?” the online survey read.
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Just 26% backed the government incentives, while 67% opposed, preferring instead to allow customers to decide. Another 7% said they’re not sure.
“Currently, the federal government provides a $7,500 subsidy for those purchasing Electric Vehicles,” the news service reports. “Sixty-one percent (61%) of voters favor a proposal to eliminate those subsidies. That support comes from 76% of Republicans and 53% of Democrats.”
The results, while not shocking, are bad news for Democratic lawmakers in both Washington DC and Lansing , both of whom are staking the future on an electric vehicle industry that’s growing far slower than many had hoped.
They also bode well for Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who made choice in vehicle purchases and protecting the auto industry from the worst parts of the government’s EV transition top issues in his successful campaign.
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The survey comes as sources close to Trump’s transition team contend the 47th POTUS is crafting plans to kill the $7,500 consumer tax credit for EVs as part of a broader tax reform package, a move backed by the world’s largest EV producer, Reuters reports.
While Team Trump did not confirm that report, the transition team issued a statement to Reuters that vowed the president-elect will deliver on “promises he made on the campaign trail.”
Trump vowed to “immediately terminate Joe Biden’s insane electric vehicle mandate,” while Elon Musk, the Trump-supporting CEO of Tesla, has also urged him to “take away the subsidies.”
“There’s no question there’s real risk in the EV credit going away” in 2025, Jamie Wickett, partner at the Hogan Lovells law firm that specializes in federal tax policy, told CNBC.
“If you’re a consumer in the market for an EV, I would without a doubt push that into 2024, if at all possible – whether an outright purchase or a lease – just to reduce the risk of the credit going away.”
Eliminating the federal tax credit would expose how much the federal government is propping up the EV industry, prompting predictions from folks like United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain a repeal would cost “hundreds of thousands” of auto jobs.
But the reality is the Big Three are already laying off thousands in Michigan and elsewhere as demand for EV wanes, and experts predict that trend could accelerate if the country doesn’t change course.
Of the 315,000 auto and parts manufacturing jobs in Michigan in 2020, the state has lost 145,600 despite lawmakers spending $22.7 billion in business incentives to stop the bleeding.
A report from the America First Policy Institute in September found regulations from the Biden-Harris administration that will require two-thirds of new vehicles to be electric by 2032 would only make matters worse.
“If EVs rise to 67% of U.S. vehicle sales the model estimates that almost 123,000 net auto-manufacturing jobs will be lost,” the report read.
That includes more than 37,000 in Michigan, about 24,000 in Indiana, 22,000 in Ohio, 12,000 in Tennessee, 9,000 in South Carolina, 9,000 in Alabama, 8,000 in Illinois, 5,000 in North Carolina, and 5,000 in Kentucky, according to AFPI.
The reason is EVs have much fewer parts than traditional gas-powered vehicles, and require about 30% to 40% less labor to produce. The UAW estimated in 2018 that if one fifth of new vehicle sales were electric by 2030, the shift would eliminate 35,000 of its members, or nearly 1 in 10.
Other research highlighted by AFPI details billions the auto industry has already lost in the forced transition to EVs, and data that aligns with the new results from the Napolitan News survey.
“The Deloitte 2024 Global Automotive Study found that two-thirds of Americans prefer their next car purchase to be a gas-powered vehicle, 6 percent prefer an entirely battery-powered car, and 21 percent prefer a hybrid vehicle,” the report read. “A recent survey of car dealerships also found that 45 percent of dealerships reported they would not sell EVs under any circumstances.”
In Michigan, a telephone survey of 600 likely general election voters in July found the same. Seventy-one percent told pollsters for The Detroit News and WDIV they have no plans to buy an EV, while just 24% said they would consider one for their next vehicle, and 5% were unsure.
The opposition to EVs also extends to the folks who make them, including some who have spoken out in the media against the government-forced transition.
“It could definitely cost us our jobs, and it already has cost a lot of people their jobs,” Doug, a former Democrat and union auto worker in Warren who works on EVs, told BBC.