A Setback for the Transition to Electric Vehicles

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To the Editor:

Re “President Plans to Ease Deadline on Car Emissions” (front page, Feb. 18):

It’s not surprising that Big Auto, Big Oil, car dealers and others have teamed up to run the Environmental Protection Agency’s draft auto pollution rules off the road. What is surprising and appalling is that after the hottest year on record and pledges to boldly confront the climate crisis, the Biden administration is bowing to their unseemly pressure.

The draft called for a rapid ramp up to requiring 67 percent of new cars, S.U.V.s and pickups to run on electricity by 2032. Instead, the administration will slow the ramp up, delaying the switch to clean electric cars. This will mean America’s new cars will use more oil, spew more pollution, intensify global warming and sicken more kids with asthma.

Myopic automakers may profit in the short term but pay in the long run when the world’s largest E.V. manufacturer — China — seizes the market while American companies produce more of yesterday’s gas guzzlers.

U.S. car companies never recovered the huge market share they lost to Japanese companies in the 1970s and ’80s. They don’t seem to have learned from their past fiasco.

Daniel F. Becker
Washington
The writer is the director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Safe Climate Transport Campaign.

To the Editor:

I’m not pleased with this change in policy, but at the very least, President Biden had better maintain or even improve support for E.V. purchases by the public, such as tax credits and increasing the number of charging stations.