President Joe Biden has vowed to replace the almost 650,000-strong federal vehicle fleet with electric cars as part of his climate agenda.
"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 made by American workers," the President said on Monday, as quoted by Reuters.
"The current offerings are pretty slim, but the industry's about to unleash an avalanche of new product, and a lot of it built in North America," Kristin Dziczek, Automotive Research VP of industry, labor and economics at the Center for Automotive Research, told CNBC. "Just about every U.S. plant is going to have a hybrid or electric product."
TechCrunch's Kristen Korosec noted that the pledge is part of a broader effort from the new administration to create 1 million new jobs in the carm manufacturing industry and supply chain.
All U.S. carmakers have ambitious EV programs, not to mention the many EV startups jumping on the climate change bandwagon with a variety of models, most of them at the prototype stage.
GM, for instance, plans to have 30 electric models by 2025. The total investment, including spending on autonomous models, will come in at $27 billion. Ford is also pouring billions-$11.5 billion by 2022 to be precise-in EVs, betting on electric versions of its most well-known and popular models such as the Transit and the F-150.
CNBC noted that the President failed to provide a timeline for the shift from gasoline vehicles to EVs and whether the plan included plug-in hybrids. It might take a while, the report noted, as EVs are more expensive than ICE cars.
Reuters reported that as of 2019, the U.S. federal fleet consumed 375 million gallons of fuel, as per data from the General Services Administration. The 645,000-car fleet cost the government $4.4 billion during that year.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. More