Biden-Harris push for electric vehicles suffers blow after Ford backtracks EV plan: ‘unwanted and unworkable’

The car industry is backing away from rolling out electric vehicles in favor of hybrid options, indicating more defeats to the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to force EV sales on American buyers. 

Ford announced last week that the car giant is changing its electric vehicle strategy and backing away from its planned all-electric, three-row SUV, instead favoring the creation of hybrid vehicles for its next rollout of three-row SUVs. 

“Our focus here is to remake Ford into a higher-growth, higher-margin, more capital-efficient and durable business, and that means these vehicles need to be profitable,” John Lawler, Ford vice chair and chief financial officer, said on a call with media Wednesday morning. “And if they’re not profitable, based on where the customer is in the market is, we will pivot and adjust and make those tough decisions.”

The announcement is a blow to left-wing electric car initiatives, many of which have been promoted by Harris across her last three and a half years as vice president. 

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“It is abundantly clear that the federal government’s push to ram electric vehicles down everyone’s throat was unwanted and unworkable. The mandates forced on Americans under Biden-Harris will dismantle what remains of Michigan’s industrial base, destroy American jobs, and make us more dependent on Communist China,” Republican Michigan congressional candidate Tom Barrett told Digital in reaction to Dearborn-based Ford’s move last week. “In Congress, I will continue my fight to protect the rights of consumers to purchase the vehicle that meet their needs and their family’s budget, not the social engineering agenda of bureaucrats in Washington.”

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Digital examined Harris’ record and involvement with the electric vehicle push and programs amid her vice presidency, and found the Democrat has had a heavy hand in promoting the end to traditional gas-powered vehicles. Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket last month, after President Biden exited the race amid mounting concerns over his mental acuity and 81 years of age. 

Stretching back to her Senate career, Harris was one of the original co-signers of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Edward Markey’s, D-Mass., 2019 Green New Deal legislation, which worked to establish a blueprint to shift the nation to 100% “clean energy” by 2040. The measure failed in the Senate. 

Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden on the campaign trail together. (Getty Images)

After the Biden-Harris ticket won the 2020 election, Harris continued spearheading climate change initiatives, most notably taking charge of the Clean School Bus program. The EPA-backed program was created nearly three years ago as a provision under the Biden administration’s 2021 infrastructure bill, and allocated $5 billion for the program. The EPA has since made $1 billion in grants available to help deliver nearly 2,500 electric school buses to school districts across the nation. 

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Harris and EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan were touted by the federal government as the point people for the program, but it has only delivered 60 battery-electric or low-emissions propane-fueled school buses, the Washington Free Beacon reported last month. 

“Every school day, 25 million children ride our nation’s largest form of mass transit: the school bus. The vast majority of those buses run on diesel, exposing students, teachers, and bus drivers to toxic air pollution,” Harris said of the program earlier this year. “Today, we are announcing nearly $1 billion to fund clean school buses across the nation. As part of our work to tackle the climate crisis, the historic funding we are announcing today is an investment in our children, their health, and their education. It also strengthens our economy by investing in American manufacturing and America’s workforce.”

Harris found herself in a viral moment in 2022, when she visited a Seattle school to promote the program and gushed about her love of yellow school buses. (The Image Direct for Digital)

Amid the bus plan rollout, Harris found herself in a viral moment in 2022, when she visited a Seattle school to promote the program and gushed about her love of yellow school buses – comments that were subsequently mocked on social media. 

“Who doesn’t love a yellow school bus, right? Can you raise your hand if you love a yellow school bus? Many of us went to school on the yellow school bus, right? It’s part of our experience growing up. It’s part of a nostalgia, a memory of the excitement and joy of going to school to be with your favorite teacher, to be with your best friends and to learn. The school bus takes us there,” Harris said in the rambling remarks. 

Critics quickly shot back that Democrats “really can’t let [Harris] talk in public about anything.” 

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“Democrats have been hiding Kamala, but she just had a press conference and talked about yellow school buses and my goodness they really can’t let her talk in public about anything,” OutKick founder Clay Travis posted on X at the time. 

“Selina Meyer,” The Federalist author Eddie Scarry tweeted, referencing Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ character on the HBO comedy “Veep.”

Republican activist Matthew Foldi tweeted, “Find yourself someone who loves you as much as Kamala Harris loves Venn diagrams and yellow school buses.”

CNN contributor Mary Katherine Ham also joked, “Please sing Wheels on the Bus, please sing Wheels on the Bus.”

Harris was in fact caught on camera awkwardly singing “the wheels on the bus go round and round,” in another viral moment. 

Harris was also charged with helping lead the “Electric Vehicle Charging Action Plan” in December 2021, to ensure 50% of car sales were electric vehicles by 2030. The Biden-Harris administration further cracked down on the plan this year with one of the most significant climate regulations in U.S. history – it would force half of all new cars and trucks sold in 2030 to be electric. 

“Together, we’ve made historic progress. Hundreds of new expanded factories across the country. Hundreds of billions in private investment and thousands of good-paying union jobs. And we’ll meet my goal for 2030 and race forward in the years ahead,” Biden said in March of the plan. 

The $7.5 billion federal program, which was part of 2021’s infrastructure bill, aimed to install half a million EV charging stations across the nation, but has only produced as many as eight federal charging stations as of May. 

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was confronted with the lack of charging stations in May on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” when host Margaret Brennan grilled him as to why only up to eight stations had been installed. 

“Now, in order to do a charger, it’s more than just plugging a small device into the ground,” the secretary said. “There’s utility work, and this is also really a new category of federal investment. But we’ve been working with each of the 50 states.”

“Seven or eight, though?” Brennan said with a laugh.

“Again, by 2030, 500,000 chargers,” Buttigieg said. “And the very first handful of chargers are now already being physically built.”

Electric vehicle plugged in at a charging station. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Car industry leaders have long argued that the push by Democrats – most notably the Biden-Harris administration – for EVs was rolled out too quickly and will likely fail. 

“The problem with the whole EV movement is that there was a colossal amount of hype behind it, largely from what I like to call the liberal mainstream media, making it sound like everybody’s next vehicle was going to be an EV,” former Ford, Chrysler and General Motors executive Bob Lutz told Fox Digital in April. “And of course, the government was pushing it, because of their climate change policies. And it just plain wasn’t going to happen.”

“And yes, it did come too soon and too fast,” he added. 

Earlier this year, data found that electric vehicles were eating into Ford’s profit margin. Ford Model e, the company’s EV division, had a net loss of $4.7 billion last year – with $1.6 billion of that in the last quarter – and Ford’s chief financial officer John Lawler explained during the company’s earnings call in February that both “the quarter and year were impacted by challenging market dynamics and investments in next-generation vehicles.” 

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President Biden participates in stage testing ahead of the start of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19, 2024 in Chicago. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Ford, which is the second-largest EV brand in the nation behind Tesla, said last week when announcing its shift in its EV strategy that it will face a $400 million write-down of “certain product-specific manufacturing assets” for canceling the EV SUV. 

Digital reached out to Ford Sunday for additional comment on its future with EVs, but did not immediately receive a reply. 

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As Democrats continue championing the frenzied electric vehicle push, former President Trump has vowed to end the Biden administration’s “mandate” increasing the sales of electric vehicles. 

Former President Trump laughs while responding to a queston from a reporter after his remarks on Aug. 20, 2024, at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in Howell, Michigan. (Nic Antaya/Getty Images)

“I will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one. Thereby saving the U.S. auto industry from complete obliteration, which is happening right now, and saving U.S. customers thousands and thousands of dollars per car,” he said from the RNC in Milwaukee last month. 

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Trump again discussed electric vehicles in his interview with Tesla founder Elon Musk earlier this month. Musk’s Tesla is the nation’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer. Trump explained that Musk’s cars are “incredible,” but that fossil fuels are deeply intertwined with even building EVs and that the U.S. needs to “drill, baby, drill.”

Digital reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on the state of EVs just days after she accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination, but did not immediately receive a reply. 

‘ Kristen Altus and Eric Revell contributed to this report. 

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