Donald Trump Has A Lot Of Thoughts About EVs. Most Of Them Are Wrong

Former President Donald Trump recently sat down with Bloomberg for a wide-ranging interview, but as it turns out, he has a lot of thoughts about EVs and imported cars, and most of them are very wrong.

Ed Begley Jr. On The Past And Present Of Electric Vehicles

Trump actually told Bloomberg he has “no objection to the electric vehicle – the EV.” He went so far as to call them “great,” but that’s as far as the positivity went with him. He laid out three major reasons why he isn’t in favor of electric vehicles, and two of them are just dead wrong. Credit where credit is due, he was right about one thing. Anyway, this is what Trump told Bloomberg about EVs:

“The cars don’t go far enough. They’re very, very expensive. They’re also heavy,” Trump told Bloomberg senior reporters Nancy Cook and Joshua Green, Managing Editor Mario Parker and Businessweek Editor Brad Stone for their cover story published Tuesday.

Let’s unpack his claims quickly. First, EV range is more than adequate for how much most Americans are driving every day. Second, while EVs are more expensive than their gas-powered equivalents, there are plenty of cheaper EV alternatives hitting the market right now, so that’s wrong too. Finally, he says they’re heavy. This is true, so I’ll give him that. Good job, Don!

Here’s more of what Trump said during his interview with Bloomberg:

Trump made more than a few gaffes in the course of delivering this attack. He said “you can’t have 100% of your cars electric,” suggesting that the Biden administration has set a target to phase out combustion engine cars (it hasn’t). He overstated how much it will cost the US to build enough EV chargers, as well as the share of vehicle sales that would need to be electric by 2032 to meet emissions standards that the Environmental Protection Agency toughened under Biden.

[…]

“We have hundreds of thousands of electric cars right now that aren’t selling, and yet you don’t hear any complaints from the car companies,” he said during his interview with Bloomberg. “Normally, if a car doesn’t sell, you know, it’s a front-page story on Businessweek. Right? But they are not selling and the car companies are happy.”

Last month, Trump told House Republicans that he would completely reverse President Biden’s electric vehicle policies. His newly selected running mate, JD Vance, has also come out strongly against EVs, saying that he wants taxpayers to subsidize internal combustion-powered cars rather than electric vehicles.

Regardless, electric cars weren’t the only piece of the automotive landscape to catch Trump’s ire. He also went after foreign automakers.

Trump veered to the topic of cars a couple more times in the course of the Businessweek interview, playing up the threat of Chinese carmakers looking to build plants in Mexico.

This happens to be a topic where Trump and Biden seem to be eye to eye. Although companies including BYD have mulled over manufacturing investments in Mexico, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in December that the US intends to help its neighbor beef up screening of foreign investments, including from China.

The Biden administration also has been considering restrictions on imports of Chinese cars that would apply no matter where final assembly takes place, to prevent Chinese manufacturers from entering the US market through third countries including Mexico, Bloomberg reported in February. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo confirmed the potential curbs in March.

Unfortunately for German and Japanese carmakers, they have more risks to worry about from a second Trump presidency than just the ones posed to their EV and battery manufacturing investments.

[…]

“They treat us violently. They don’t take our cars. We take their cars by the millions,” Trump said. While he called Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — who was assassinated in 2022 — a “very good friend,” Trump said Japan was “rough on” the US and “still is.”

It’s not immediately clear if Trump knows Abe is indeed no longer alive.

Anyway, that’s enough out of me. Head over to Bloomberg for a full rundown of Trump’s thoughts on the current automotive landscape and how a second Trump presidency could impact automakers in the U.S. and around the world.