Tesla Isn’t the Biggest Winner From Biden’s EV Plan
The incentives are less about boosting the fortunes of the top U.S. electric-vehicle maker and more about enabling the competition bearing down on it.
Not all sunshine and rainbows.
Photographer: David Gannon/AFP/Getty Images
Shares of Tesla Inc. have jumped predictably on news of electric-vehicle incentives in President Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion greenish new deal proposal, the “American Jobs Plan.” That looks at odds with what Biden is actually trying to achieve.
Biden’s proposals, just unveiled ahead of a significant policy speech he is set to deliver in Pittsburgh on Wednesday afternoon, contain $174 billion centered on electric vehicles (EVs). While that is considerably smaller than the $450 billion Clean Cars for America proposal advocated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, it shares several of the same elements, and the level of ambition is unlike anything seen before from the federal government when it comes to EVs. Biden aims to expand discounts and rebates for drivers to buy the vehicles. He plans incentives to increase the number of public vehicle chargers to half a million by 2030, up from 72,000 at the end of 2019. In terms of direct procurement, he calls for electrifying the roughly 650,000-strong federal vehicle fleet as well as tens of thousands of transit vehicles, including school buses.