Features
26 Jan 21

President Biden: Build Back Better, but for how long?

The election of Joe Biden as president will have far-reaching effects on the automotive industry, on infrastructure and on mobility that may even be felt across the borders.

With former reality TV star and former president Donald Trump in exile in the echo chamber of his Florida White House, the outlook for US politics looks very different from what it was only a few weeks ago.

Tougher fuel efficiency standards

The new administration won’t only introduce tougher fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, standards for aeroplanes, appliances and buildings will also be revisited.

In March last year, the Trump administration rolled back the 5% yearly boost in efficiency through 2026 to 1.5%. Biden is going back to the original 5% target introduced by Barack Obama.

Biden has also reasserted the state of California’s authority to set its own car emissions standards.

Both moves will have a direct effect on the makeup of the US vehicle fleet in years to come.

550,000 EV charging stations

Already on his first day in office, President Biden signed a stack of executive orders to chart the course for the next four years. One such order paves the way for mass electric vehicle adoption. During his election campaign, President Biden promised to invest $5 billion dollar to install 550,000 EV chargers by 2030. In all, the Biden administration’s electrification plans should create 1 million new jobs.

The US has a total of 111,000 service stations and 28,726 individual charging stations today – numbers that illustrate the scale of the effort ahead. There’s a big caveat, though: funding for the plan still needs to be secured.

Federal vehicle fleet replaced with EVs

Today, the US federal vehicle fleet is estimated at around 645,000 vehicles. President Biden plans to replace all of them by American-made electric vehicles. A timeline has not been announced.

Included in this fleet are the delivery vehicles used by the US Postal Service. To date, the USPS is still looking for the much-anticipated and much-delayed replacement for the Grumman LLV.

Build Back Better

Biden’s former presidential rival Pete Buttigieg has been appointed to lead the Department of Transportation. Together with other key officials like former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, the new energy secretary, and EPA administrator Michael Regan, they will be tasked with implementing Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, a plan to modernise infrastructure and shape the future for transportation and energy.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most carmakers, said the plans are in line with their own policy agenda that steers the US towards an electrified and automated future. In a reaction to Automotive News, the association’s executive VP Don Stewart said: “It’s not predicated on one party or the other being in charge, it’s just a common set of really important opportunities that are good for our workforce and our consumers and the environment, frankly.”

Ambitious present, uncertain future

President Biden’s plans for his first term are ambitious but today’s sharp fault line in American politics also gives food for thought. As both political parties in the US’s bipartisan system drift further apart, and as each new president spends a good part of his first term trying to undo the legacy of his predecessor rather than continue building on the common denominator, how reliable is the climate for businesses iin the longer term?

Image: President Joe Biden at his inauguration in Washington, 6 January 2021 (Shutterstock)

Authored by: Benjamin Uyttebroeck