It’s still very early days, but if you’re wondering how the 2024 presidential campaign might be different from the last matchup between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, one place to start is electric vehicles. Battery-powered cars are one of the biggest economic vulnerabilities that Republicans have in the battleground states such as Georgia, Michigan and Arizona that could wind up deciding the winner.
The growth of electric vehicles is unique in that it touches an area of the U.S. economy that has changed dramatically since the last presidential election. They’re a key part of the Biden administration’s policy accomplishments, and they’re also entangled in the culture wars that animate the bases of both political parties.
Electric-vehicle sales in the U.S. are growing so quickly that you could even describe the shift as monumental. In 2020, 325,000 electric vehicles were sold in the U.S., accounting for 2.4% of all passenger vehicle sales. Those numbers are projected to rise in 2024 to almost 2.5 million vehicles, or 17.0% of all sales, according to BloombergNEF’s Electric Vehicle Outlook report published last week. That would be more EV’s sold in a year than the 1.8 million vehicles Toyota Motor Corp. sold in the U.S. in 2022. EV’s are no longer a niche.
That’s generating a massive flow of investment in EV production, battery plants and supply chains — and much of that investment is pouring into states that are likely to be pivotal in the next presidential election. Between the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022 and May 2023, $70 billion of investments were announced in the EV supply chain, with battleground states Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina each getting billions of dollars in projects.
Over the next 16 months, Biden will likely be doing hard-hat tours and ribbon cuttings at facilities like these, touting them as outcomes made possible by the legislation he signed, and fulfilling campaign promises to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. Politics being what it is, if Democrats are touting something, it’s no surprise that Republicans are being critical. Yet, it was still jarring to hear Trump say in Georgia in recent days that he’d scrap support for EV’s on his “first day in office” should he win the election.