America’s new President just made one of his most significant policy announcements to date. The entire US federal fleet of vehicles will transition completely to electric vehicles.
Biden says the Government owns an enormous fleet of vehicles, which they’re going to replace with clean electric vehicles made in America. To understand just how significant that announcement is, we need to look at how many vehicles the US Government has both owned and on lease.
According to data from the US General Services Administration, in 2019, the US federal fleet included 645,047 vehicles. The single largest Government division by quantity is the US Postal Service with a massive 225,668 vehicles, followed by the total military agencies which included 173,429.
Biden says this move will create a million new clean energy jobs.
During the election campaign Biden had announced a massive infrastructure plan to fund 500,000 public electric vehicle chargers. With many of these fleet vehicles residing on Government property, its likely they’ll need to add additional chargers to recharge these new fleet EVs.
We can see in the graph below the breakdown by vehicle category, reveals Light Trucks is the most common vehicle category. If you were an electric vehicle manufacturer in America right now and didn’t have a product in this category, it may be worth strongly considering adding one.
Biden is proving to be a real friend of EVs, with other announcements including an expansion of consumer tax credits for EV purchases. Those EV makers like Tesla that had surpassed 200,000 sales, became ineligible to offer $7,500 tax credit, however under Biden that is likely to be scraped, making more EVs, more affordable to more Americans.
Without a local vehicle production in Australia, unfortunately Australia can’t replicate this same strategy of the Government taking a lead in transition their fleet to electric vehicles, while increasing local jobs at the same time.
Australia could however, mandate that all Government vehicles are going electric, increasing the opportunity for automakers in Australia, helping draw new offerings to the country.
The diversity of electric vehicles is one of the big complaints from potential EV owners, along with cost. The cost equation could be substantially helped if Government-leased EVs entered the 2nd hand market in Australia at the end of their cycle (typically 2 years or 30,000kms).
Australia often follows America on public policy and I’d strongly encourage our Government to follow Biden on this one.
You can watch the full announcement here.
It would be good if state and local government phased out noisy petrol powered lawnmowers in there parks and gardens . Thereby creating a demand for electric lawnmowers that could flow into the domestic market.
Wow, one job for every .6 vehicles. Does anyone fact check anymore?
What are you expecting, 1 job per car? In modern manufacturing, many roles are fulfilled by robots, but there are also new roles opening as cars introduce more software and services. I feel today’s announcement was a positive overarching direction-setting move, with the actual detail on the timeline, number of jobs and cost to be flushed out over the coming months and years.
No, why would you think that? Either the 1 million new jobs is a lie or each electric vehicle is going to cost a hell of a lot of money.
The finances are going to be interesting.. cost of EVs is premium now, but decreasing. The lower running costs should mean lower total cost of ownership over the lease period, so savings to be had in the long term. Expect they’re the lion’s share of the way done by the end of Biden’s 4 years.
Do you think conventional cars provide 1.5 jobs per car? The ToC of EV is more expensive if you factor the cost of capital. The 1m new jobs is a joke.
Good article! Keep up the good work!
Thanks Dan, will do.
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Tax payer funded projects to make Elon Musk richer.
Actually don’t think Tesla will be selected for many of the applications. As Ford / GM electric vehicles come online over the next couple of years, I expect many of the fleet to be from these OEMs.
The bigger question….so who’s paying for the required upgrade to the national grid ?
…..Just as i thought .
This is high time to use electric vehicles. Day by day increase the popularity of electric cars. Electric cars help to reduce carbon emissions. It is increasing the ability of sustainability.
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Great