MINNEAPOLIS — Car dealerships across the nation are asking President Biden to pull back on electric vehicle proposals meant to get more battery-powered cars on the road.
A group of nearly 4,000 auto dealers sent a letter to President Biden this week asking him to pump the brakes on regulations that would require two-thirds of new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2032.
To meet that goal Scott Lambert with the Minnesota Automobile Dealers Association says automakers are pushing more EVs on dealers, but they're not selling fast enough, so the EVs are sitting on their lots and it's costing the dealers money.
“The business model is we buy inventory from the factories, and the factories say look, if you want this hot truck, you gotta take five of these other vehicles we’re having a hard time selling. So, the dealers go to a bank, they take out a loan, they buy these vehicles and they hold them on the lot until they sell and some of them sitting for a long time,” Lambert explains.
According to the Automotive News, 39 auto dealers in Minnesota signed the letter.
Lambert says dozens more would have signed the letter, but his association didn't get a chance to send it around to their members until the letter was already on its way to the White House.
“The letter is kind of an effort to say hey, can we slow down? You’re pushing supply on us that we don’t have customers for right now,” Lambert says.
Jukka Kukkonen with Shift2Electric argues this problem is only temporary.
He would like to see the auto industry push through these problems and not slow down the transition to electric vehicles.
"They know how to sell things if they decide to put their minds to it. I'm not concerned about them in that way,” Kukkonen said.
Lambert argues extending these mandates and giving the auto industry more time would also give EV companies more time to develop better products that would essentially sell themselves.
"If we can get to a truck or SUV that can get 400 miles on a charge, that can operate in cold weather, and has some towing capacity, then we won't need mandates to sell these vehicles. They will fly off the lots on their own,” Lambert says.
As of Thursday night, the White House had not issued a formal response to this letter from the auto dealers.
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