Joe Biden ramped up his climate change policies on Thursday by signing an executive order calling for half of all new vehicles sold in the US to be electric by 2030 as part of plans to slash transport emissions. The US president announced the target as he said federal agencies laid plans to reverse former president Donald Trump’s gutting of aggressive Obama-era rules on fuel efficiency and vehicle emissions.
Cars and trucks that can drive further on the same amount of fuel emit less pollution. The US Environmental Protection Agency and US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that for Model Year 2023, vehicles would need to achieve 38.2mpg under real-world driving conditions.
In 2012, former president Barack Obama set the target at 36.8mpg, but Trump lowered it to 32.2mpg. Automakers would need to improve efficiency 10 per cent between Model Year 2022 and 2023, with the pace of annual improvement slowing to 5 per cent in Model Year 2026.
But environmentalists said the new targets cannot undo the damage of the Trump years. The vehicles sold during that period will continue to pollute at higher rates as long as they are driven.
