Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., told Newsmax on Thursday that House Republicans are calling on the Biden administration to abandon its push for the U.S. to switch from gas-powered vehicles to electric vehicles because the infrastructure to support them is nowhere near ready and Americans don't want them.
"121 colleagues and myself have signed a letter calling for NHTSA [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] to back off on its proposed CAFE [Corporate Average Fuel Economy] standards that would go in concert with the EPA's [Environmental Protection Agency] proposal that went out a few weeks ago that would basically mandate … over two-thirds of the vehicles to be sold and put on the roads would have to be EV [Electric Vehicles] because of tailpipe emissions," Walberg said during an appearance on "Wake Up America."
"What we are … doing is mandating that people buy EVs," he continued. "The American government isn't supposed to be doing that. In fact, our law says that when the NHTSA goes for CAFE standards they cannot factor in EV because it's so different compared to a liquid-fueled vehicle. So, this is just wrong, and it's government intervention that is mandating something that people don't want."
Walberg went on to say that transitioning to electric vehicles is "very concerning" because it actually makes the United States more reliant on China, which is the world's leading producer of two key parts in EV batteries.
"We saw during COVID, our reliance upon China for all sorts of things, including masks … that was problematic in a great way to us," he said. "So now, China has the most EVs on the road of any developed country in the world and yet they are providing energy to power up those EVs with coal-fired energy plants. Now, what sense does that make for us to put ourselves in a similar situation? Let's use the free market approach.
"As an environmentalist myself, I love the environment. I love our resources, but I'm a steward of that. We ought to use that appropriately. But, in this case, what we're doing is mandating something that won't work and may end up hurting our environment more than helping it."
The American public "does not really want" electric vehicles right now, Walberg said, because they "don't meet their needs" and "some of the major problems" with the vehicles are starting to show, including range problems in "cold weather situations."
"I was talking with an auto dealer yesterday," Walberg said. "He had, as he called it, took the hit and in order to show that our dealership was selling the EVs, as we're expected to do, 'I took one myself. And when I was going to the Lions game I looked, and I saw,' he said, 'I had 160 miles left on the battery and it was only 25 miles to the stadium.' So, he said 'fine' [and] he took off. Because of the cold weather and the traffic jams, when he got close to the stadium and realized he only had 60 miles left, the concern was 'when I get out of the stadium, after the Lions win, I may have a real problem to get home.' So, he missed most of the first quarter of the game in order to get to a station where he could get a charge and wait in line. He finally got it, got to the stadium, made it home."
The next day, the line was so long to charge the vehicle that the auto dealer had to call a dealership employee to come bring "an ICE [Internal Combustion Engine] powered vehicle to pick him up and charge up his vehicle" in order to get to work.
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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