WardsAuto Podcast: Lobbyist Says U.S. BEV Rules Favor China

The auto industry leans on The Alliance for Automotive Innovation to fight its regulatory battles in Washington, D.C. The group packs more punch since the 2020 merger of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which lobbied for domestic and foreign-owned automakers, and the Association of Global Automakers, which represented foreign-owned manufacturers.

Alliance CEO and President John Bozzella has persisted through both Republican and Democratic administrations, with each party doling out a number of headaches over the years. The last Republican administration enacted costly steel tariffs in order to appease a few steel-mill Congressional districts. Democrats have steadily pushed higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, and currently back an EPA rule proposal that will try and push automakers’ BEV production to about two-thirds of new cars sales by 2032.

Bozzella believes the standard is too aggressive, and worries that his stakeholders will be paying onerous penalties because of three key issues: the charging infrastructure won’t develop fast enough to spur consumer uptake of battery-electric-vehicles (BEVs); an EV supply chain that is U.S.-based as well as based with countries friendly to the U.S. won’t mature fast enough, thus having the industry more dependent on a supply chain that runs through China; the U.S. power  grid will not reach a sufficient level of stability and security to support tens of millions of BEVs projected to be on the road by 2030.

Bozzella joins WardsAuto Podcast host, Senior Editor David Kiley, to discuss those issues and more.