The outlook for electrical vehicles is looking truly shaky. Sales are up for most companies not named “Tesla,” but with Donald Trump promising to eliminate all of the generous subsidies and taxation credits put in place by the Biden administration, that momentum could falter. Trump is besides getting ready to unleash a flood of tariffs on abroad imports, including car supplies. And he’s expected to relax tailpipe emanation rules that could slow down EV sales even more — and let car companies to sale more polluting vehicles.
Amid all this, Pete Buttigieg, who oversaw much of Biden’s EV policies, is trying to put on a brave face. While the incoming Trump squad sharpens its knives, the transportation secretary is finishing out his days by approving as much spending as he can from the administration’s 2 landmark laws, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the climate-focused Inflation simplification Act, before Trump can claw the remainder back.
He’s besides holding on to hope that Republican lawmakers, especially those who have straight benefited from the administration’s spending on EVs and clean energy, will defy Trump’s efforts to undo his predecessor’s accomplishments.
“I think the bulk of our work will endure”
“For all conservative legislator publically threatening to reverse our work, there’s 2 or 3 who look like they’re trying to take credit for it,” he said in an exit interview with The Verge. “And as long as that ratio keeps up, I think the bulk of our work will endure.”
Still, you can tell the election results and the coming turnover was weighing on Buttigieg, who seemed a lot more downbeat than in his previous interviews with The Verge. We besides asked him what he wasn’t able to accomplish while in office and to describe his hopes for himself — and us — for the future.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Donald Trump has said he’s going to end the “EV mandate” on day one. Which of your policies do you see as the most endangered, and which are more likely to last for the next 4 years?
I’m not that worried about having an EV mandate since there isn’t one, but I am afraid that he might take steps to make EVs more costly for American consumers. And that would be unfortunate. The work we’ve done to make EVs more affordable is part of why there are more and more jobs being created in the industrial Midwest, in places like where I grew up that are seeing a level of car manufacture growth that we haven’t had since the ’60s. And I think that needs to be kept up, especially due to the fact that there is clearly a ferocious innovation competition with China. They’re utilizing all the tools in their tool kit to effort to edge us out, and we can’t let that happen.
I think the thing that has been the most effective in the short word has been the taxation credits and making them more affordable. I think in the average term, the thing that will substance the most is the charging network. Even though 80 percent of EV charging happens at home, we know that the another 20 percent truly matters. And most of the projects that we set into motion will be physically online by 2027.
“I am afraid that [Trump] might take steps to make EVs more costly for American consumers.”
Given that it’s likely EVs are going to become more costly over the next fewer years, how do you think the car manufacture should respond to the elimination of these incentives? And how do you think customers are going to respond?
What we’ve seen lately is, despite any of the coverage and the stories that are out there all single year, more Americans choose EVs. I think that trend will proceed even if there’s policy fluctuation due to the benefits in terms of the full cost of ownership. Having a vehicle with less moving parts and less fluids active and that’s just cheaper to fuel will, in the long run, be why the marketplace sends us in that direction.
Regardless, I think the crucial thing is to proceed supporting a “Made in America” EV industry. And I’m afraid about that. The OEMs are going to do what makes the most sense to them in the given policy environment. They’ve made quite a few choices that there’s truly no turning back for them. But of course, they’re going to request to modulate that up or down from year to year based on the market. That’s what businesses do, and that’s totally appropriate.
What kind of dangers do you feel be for the climate from a transportation perspective, considering we’ve got an incoming administration that is rejecting the thought that climate change is an accepted discipline and seems ready to enact policies that will aid worsen the effects of climate change?
The climate doesn’t care whether people care about it or not. It’s going to keep changing. And we request to keep adapting and doing what we can to prevent it from being worse than it already is. Obviously, it matters erstwhile you have an administration that cares about it versus 1 that doesn’t.
My experience as a mayor was that if cities, representing the bulk of global GDP, got together and said, “We’re not going to wait on our national capitals. We’re going to take action ourselves.” That’s how the C40, which became the climate mayors, was born. So I have quite a few assurance that state and local work will proceed and that there are fresh stakeholders, including red states, working-class car manufacturing families, who will be possibly a amazingly strong backstop on the continued importance of the growth of the manufacture in our country.
Have you heard specifically from any of these red state lawmakers in the alleged Battery Belt where these factories are going up, places like Tennessee and Kentucky? Have they told you anything that gives you assurance that possibly there’s going to be more pushback on the elimination of these policies?
Often, it’s more in what they don’t say than what they do say. The conspicuous decision of leaders in places like Georgia and Indiana not to effort to pile on the anti-EV ideology because, of course, governors like cutting ribbons on good-paying building trades and manufacturing jobs. And that’s precisely what’s happening due to our work. If anything, I think there will be an effort for others to effort to take credit for it. But the most crucial thing is that happens at all.
“The climate doesn’t care whether people care about it or not.”
Was the politicization of EVs over the course of the presidential run inevitable? Or do you think there was more the administration could have done to push back against that?
I think we did everything we could to stress that this shouldn’t be a Republican or Democratic thing. That erstwhile you’re in a high-stakes innovation competition with a country like China, you have nothing to gain by kind of over-indexing on old technology or telling people that what we did in the last century is going to work in this 1 without modernizing. I’ve just never seen a country win out by looking only to its past.
As we’ve seen in our time, everything from public wellness to transportation policy can get politicized. But again, I think the marketplace will actually point in a beautiful powerful direction here. And part of how I know that is you’ve got a country like China, which is conspicuously not enthusiastic about environmental protection, and they’re all in there doing that for a reason. The reason is economical strategy. And we better not be caught sleeping erstwhile it comes to our economical strategy. That’s a bipartisan concern.
The Trump squad is besides reportedly looking into canceling the standing general order on autonomous vehicle and advanced driver-assist crash reporting. That was another notable thing that happened under your watch. What do we stand to lose there if this kind of transparency is eliminated and we don’t have insight into any of these crashes?
To put it simply, I think kneecapping a safety initiative is not a good idea. I’ve seen lots of second-hand reporting on that. I don’t know what will actually happen. But what I know is that we request to make certain we have good information about the safety of this technology coming onto our roadways. And I say that not due to the fact that I’m against that technology. On the contrary, I think it’s precisely due to the theoretically lifesaving possible that we request to get the rollout right as a country.
“I’ve just never seen a country win out by looking only to its past.”
Trump besides seems to be considering policies that favour his fresh best friend, Elon Musk. What concerns do you have seeing individual like Musk, with all of his conflicts and government entanglements, so close to power?
When you consider the power of any national agency — surely 1 like the USDOT, which has quite a few life-and-death work — it’s incredibly crucial that that power be utilized in ways that are fair and objective. And we’ve sought to do that by calling balls and strikes without fear or favor. Sometimes that has meant that in the same period we are congratulating a company for any partnership with us in 1 realm, we’re besides launching enforcement actions against them for any concern or violation in another realm. You should be ready to call balls and strikes. And I hope there is adequate public and congressional scrutiny to make certain that happens no substance who’s in charge here.
Do you think the Biden administration could have courted Musk a small more mildly or strategically, given how he has emerged as this force in terms of his support for Trump and how much Tesla has been influential in the EV market?
Maybe, it’s hard to say in hindsight. 1 thing I’ve observed is that quite a few the players in this space — even though you would think it is hyper-rational given how method and how economical it is — the fact is, there’s a beautiful large emotion origin there, too. And I think it’s crucial to take that into account.
I besides wanted to ask you about the ARPA task with infrastructure. That was a large announcement over the last 4 years. How do you see that kind of progressing into the next administration? Do you feel like there’s inactive going to be support for a Skunk Works-style task around infrastructure?
I think so. I hope so. I think there’s tremendous possible here. I mean, any of the technologies that we usage for transportation haven’t changed that much since the days of the Romans. And yet we know there’s evidence that everything from 500-year concrete to self-healing bridge components is possibly within our grasp. I mean, it could come to fruition in my lifetime. So given that any of those things are trillion-dollar ideas, we should proceed investing the modest, comparatively modest millions that make it possible. And this is something, too, I hope is bipartisan. Innovation should be bipartisan. So far, I haven’t seen a strong politician / Republican valence about unlocking any of those technologies. We just request to be smart about which things the marketplace can take care of and which things just don’t happen unless there’s government support.
A common criticism I heard about the Inflation simplification Act was that quite a few money was being spent to incentivize cars, but not adequate to get people out of their cars and walking and biking. There was an announcement present about $45 million for any active transportation. But compare that to the tens of billions of dollars spent on EVs, it seems kind of like a drop in the bucket. Do you feel like this was the right balance to strike, or do you think more could have been done?
That would be actual if you looked at the IRA in a vacuum. But the fact is, even though we think we call the IRA the climate bill, in many ways the infrastructure bill was our climate bill as a department. What I mean by that is simply quite a few the things that went into supporting transit or supporting a new, better way to plan our highways and bridges will mean just as much or more for carbon contamination simplification as what’s in the IRA. EVs help, but that’s only part of the story.
How are you personally feeling seeing all of these policies that you spent so much time on — so much effort, so much political capital to get enacted — now that they’re all on the chopping block or endangered?
I just can’t speculate or foretell what will happen next. But what I do know is what we did was good policy and good work. 1 of the most flattering and convincing pieces of evidence I see for that is for all conservative legislator publically threatening to reverse our work, there’s 2 or 3 who look like they’re trying to take credit for it. And as long as that ratio keeps up, I think the bulk of our work will endure.
And for those folks who are waiting with dread about what’s going to come down the pike in terms of transportation policy and climate policy — are we screwed, or do you think there’s any hope for the future?
As a national official, I have sometimes been impatient with the limitations of the national level compared to the power that our strategy places in state and local hands. I think going forward, possibly I’ll go back to my mayoral mentality and remember how much of our salvation comes from the local in this country. Again, any things are good policy in a way that endures no substance who’s in charge, even if they have a different vocabulary or a different emphasis. I actually think the realm of transportation work is 1 of the ones that will be the most durably bipartisan, even if, obviously, the next administration will show little interest in issues like climate change, labour union support, or racial and economical justice compared to this one.
As a last question, if you had another 4 years on this job, what are any things you would like to have done?
I just launched our Project transportation Acceleration Council. And it sounds unusual to launch something on your way out the door, but what I reminded that squad of is that their work is going to be wildly crucial under the next administration, to make certain that we pay more attention to delivery. It’s critically crucial to fund these things, but you besides gotta bring out a lot more efficiency in the task transportation process. And it isn’t sexy, but it’s wildly crucial to get more value for our payer dollar.
So as I think about the second half of this decade, erstwhile the bulk of these projects actually enter construction, that’s something I would have wanted to work on. I think I’ll proceed to find any way to work on it on the outside, and I hope it gets continued bipartisan interest in [Washington, DC] due to the fact that I think transportation is vitally, vitally important, not just on the legislative side.
The infrastructure law was a five-year bill and year 5 is coming up. legislature and the administration will gotta negociate what comes next. And it’ll be crucial to learn from everything good, bad, and indifferent that we’ve learned from the first infrastructure bill. And then from a safety perspective, I think the biggest part of unfinished business remains the rail safety government — bipartisan, cosponsored by JD Vance, completely deserving of a vote and of being passed into law. And if the next administration is the 1 to do it, I’ll be the first to cheer for that due to the fact that it’s just the right thing to do.
