Electric Cars: Policy Beyond Capability?

Peter Van DorenThe Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recentlyannounced proposed emission standards that would mandate a  large increase in the sale of new zero‐​emission vehicles from model years2027 through 2032. Compliance with the proposed rule is estimated to require 67 percent of new vehicles to be electric in 2032 compared to 5.8 percent in 2022.Informed analysts claim that the rule is extremely ambitious: “The new rule will effectively try to shove electric vehicles down the throats of the public at a faster rate than it has shown a willingness to swallow them.” The Energy Information Administration in its 2023Annual Energy Outlook (Figure 10) would seem to confirm the ambitious nature of the proposed rule, projecting electric vehicles sales of around 15 percent in the early 2030s and still under 20 percent by 2050.But the unrealistic nature of the proposal is actually a  persistent characteristic of environmental policy. So persistent, in fact, that Charles Jones used the phrase “policy beyond capability” in a 1975book (chapters 7 –8). Alan Altshuler in a 1979book (p. 73) elaborated: “There was a widespread view in 1970 that the manufacturers could do virtually anything if simply told they had to.”The history of environmental regulation consists of ambitious unrealistic goals followed by missed deadlines and lack of enforcement. The most ambitious unrealistic goal was the California legislative proposal in 1970 to ban the internal combusti...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs