Photo: Bargersville PD
During the campaign trail, Joe Biden pledged to replace government vehicles with American-made electric vehicles, and is now acting as promised. Upon assuming the presidency, he reaffirmed his intention and will begin the process of phasing out the use of gas-powered vehicles.
“The federal government also owns an enormous fleet of vehicles, which we're going to replace with clean electric vehicles made right here in America, by American workers,” Biden said during a briefing Monday announcing his “Buy American” executive order, reported The Verge.
This is great news for US EV manufacturers such as Tesla, Rivian Lordstown, Ford and General Motors. Tesla has an undoubted advantage, which has a wide range of electric vehicles with different body types, and at a more competitive price. Over the past two years, Tesla vehicles have been adopted by several US police stations and other government agencies around the world, and have established themselves as reliable and cost-effective company vehicles. Therefore, it becomes obvious that a manufacturer who has an established mass production will be best equipped to satisfy the state's needs in EVs.
There were nearly 650,000 vehicles in the federal government's fleet as of 2019, according to the Office of General Services. This includes 245,000 civilian vehicles, 173,000 military vehicles, and 225,000 post office vehicles.
In addition, Biden also promised to create a system that offers discounts or incentives to consumers to replace gasoline cars with electric vehicles.
The details of both plans are still being worked out, but taken together, they represent a huge benefit for American EV makers. One of Biden's goals is to create one million new jobs in the automotive sector, and “position America to be the global leader in the manufacturing of electric vehicles and their input materials and parts.” The president said he would achieve this goal by replacing the state's fleet with electric vehicles, and implementing a "cash-for-clunkers"-style plan.
© 2021, Eva Fox. All rights reserved.
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Article edited by @SmokeyShorts, you can follow him on Twitter
About the Author
Eva Fox
Eva Fox joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover breaking news as an automotive journalist. The main topics that she covers are clean energy and electric vehicles. As a journalist, Eva is specialized in Tesla and topics related to the work and development of the company.
