Electric vehicles let Americans rely less on dirty fossil fuels, slash the cost of powering and maintaining a car, and reduce emissions to fight global warming. Joe Biden knows there’s no time to lose in putting EVs within reach of more people.
The Biden-Harris Administration Takes Action to Accelerate America’s Clean Transportation Future
Biden and Harris have been taking real action to boost EVs since 2021, including a new initiative launched December 14. It’ll make federal workers’ business travel cleaner while saving taxpayers cash and bolstering U.S. manufacturing of EVs and charging equipment.
Today the Administration is announcing new public and private commitments to boost access to electric vehicles (EVs), save taxpayer dollars, and tackle the climate crisis. This includes leading by example on climate with the release of new Federal employee travel guidelines that direct the use of sustainable transportation for official and local travel, both domestically and internationally.
These new commitments will save taxpayers money by increasing the use of EVs and taking other cost-effective actions on clean transportation associated with business travel for the Federal workforce. In addition, the State of California, companies, and nonprofits are announcing new commitments through the Biden-Harris Administration’s EV Acceleration Challenge to expand EV fleets, increase consumer education, and grow the availability of EV charging and other clean transportation infrastructure.
How will Biden’s new EV push work?
As the Nation’s largest employer and with an annual business travel purchasing power of $2.8 billion, the Federal Government is leading by example by shifting to cleaner transportation options, including American-made electric vehicles and charging infrastructure.
In conjunction with today’s announcements from the Biden-Harris Administration, leading U.S. organizations across sectors are announcing new commitments to build America’s clean transportation future as the latest additions to President Biden’s EV Acceleration Challenge.
Just a few examples of corporate commitments to EV adoption (out of MANY):
American Express Global Business Travel is launching a new software solution that helps companies increase the adoption of EVs by prioritizing EVs over gasoline cars when travelers are booking trips and refining searches so hotels with EV charging points can be easily found.
Amtrak commits to transitioning its fleet of highway vehicles to zero emissions by 2035, which will eliminate over 3 million gallons of fuel a year.
Delta Air Lines commits to build on its achievement of over 30% ground service equipment (GSE) electrification systemwide, with its BOS, LGA, and SLC hubs all over 75% electric in the core GSE fleets, by electrifying up to 50% of its GSE in 2025, including baggage tractors, belt loaders, aircraft tow tractors and other critical fleets necessary to turn an aircraft.
IHG Hotels & Resorts, a global hotel company, is committing to developing a new supplier partnership and providing an EV charging best practices Guidebook by the end of 2023 to help accelerate EV charging installation across its portfolio of nearly 4,000 U.S hotels.
Marriott International is committing to more than double the number of hotels and available chargers for guests by the end of 2027, building on the over 4,100 EV chargers in over 1,100 properties across the U.S. so far.
Many other stakeholders made clean transportation commitments at the same time, including
rental car firms, EV charger companies, industry giants like Deloitte and Siemens, and several major nonprofits.
Are Joe Biden’s efforts working? As the White House pointed out three weeks ago:
Since the President took office, EV sales have more than quadrupled, with more than four and a half million EVs on the road. EV ownership is more affordable than ever before, with prices down over 20% from one year ago. The number of publicly available charging ports has also grown by over 70 percent, with 170,000 publicly available EV chargers across the country, putting us on track to deploy 500,000 chargers by 2026 — achieving the President’s goal four years early.
Is there still more work to be done? 100%! Lots more work. But Biden did more than many people guessed could be done. He deserves a lot of credit. AND he deserves to be re-elected.
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