Buttigieg Won’t Say California EV Policy Could Be a National Model Like Granholm Did

During a portion of an interview aired on Friday’s broadcast of “The Issue Is,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg responded to a question on whether he likes California’s plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 — a plan that drew praise from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm last week — and whether he thinks it could be a national model by stating that it’s “interesting” to see what states are doing and he’s “really interested to follow these developments” at the state level.

Host Elex Michaelson asked, “California recently announced that, by 2035, all vehicles that are new that are sold have to be electric vehicles — or can’t be gas-powered vehicles. What do you think about that, and is that something that could be a national model?”

Buttigieg responded, “Well, it’s interesting to see how the states are trying to go above and beyond what we’re doing at the federal level, and I’m really interested to follow these developments, while we continue to set a national policy that’s the baseline for all of this. We need to move in the direction of electric vehicles. And look, industry’s already there. At least one major automaker says they’re not even planning to make gas cars past 2035. But we’ve got to make sure that this happens quickly enough to help us beat climate change. We’ve got to make sure it happens affordably enough that it’s not just wealthy people, but low-income people who are the ones who most need those gas savings, if they can afford the EVs in the first place. And we need to make sure that this is a made in America EV revolution, which is why our policies are designed to encourage domestic sourcing, domestic battery materials so that we’re creating jobs on American soil.”

He also stated, “[W]e’re going to keep pushing, first of all, to seek to have gas prices go down, and secondly, to have fuel economy go up.”

In part of an interview aired on last Friday’s edition of “The Issue Is,” Granholm said she liked the California plan and that it “could be” a model for the whole country.

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