New EPA Car Pollution Standards Could Lead to 67% New EV Sales by 2032

In 2022, electric vehicles (EVs) made up just 5.8 percent of new car sales. But that number could jump as high as 67 percent by 2032 if the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) follows through with tough new tailpipe emissions standards. 

The new standards, which were shared with The New York Times Saturday by two people familiar with the situation, would be the most ambitious federal climate regulation to date. 

“The race to cleaner air, a safer climate and more made in America jobs — is on,” Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp said in a statement responding to the news. 

The standards would go beyond President Joe Biden’s stated goal of making sure around half of all cars sold in the U.S. by 2030 are EVs. Essentially, they would work by making vehicle emissions requirements so strict that automakers would have to boost their EV sales. 

The floated proposal involves four different pathways for model years 2027 to 2032, three people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post. The most ambitious of these would set emissions requirements so high (or low) that automakers would have to ensure that 54 to 60 percent of their new cars were EVs by 2030 and 64 to 67 percent by 2032. 

This would be a big boost to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and limiting the impacts of the climate crisis, since transportation is the highest emitting sector in the U.S., representing around 27 percent of the nation’s total climate warming emissions, according to the EPA. What’s more, the sector’s absolute emissions have increased more than any other sector’s between 1990 and 2020. At the same time, switching from fossil-fuel powered vehicles to EVs will reduce deadly air pollution. 

“Tailpipe emissions pollute the air we breathe and worsen severe weather,” Krupp said. 

However, such an ambitious timeline could prove challenging for the auto industry, and some people familiar with the situation told The Washington Post that some carmakers may see the standards as unrealistic. 

“This is a massive undertaking,” Alliance for Automotive Innovation President John Bozzella told The New York Times. “It is nothing short of a complete transformation of the automotive industrial base and the automotive market.”

That said, individual states and other countries have already passed ambitious timelines for phasing out gas-powered cars. In March, Maryland became the seventh state to ban new sales of the cars after 2035, as Money.com reported. The European Union approved a similar ban in February. Because of this, some experts think the auto industry could keep up with the potential proposal.

“I believe it’s pretty doable,” International Council on Clean Transportation Chair Margo Oge, who worked for Obama’s EPA, told CNN. “The industry is there. Europe is ahead of the U.S., China is ahead of Europe, and these companies are global companies.”

Oge added that the EV incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — which include grants for car makers and tax credits for consumers — would also make the target easier to reach. 

EPA Administrator Michael Regan is set to announce the new standards Wednesday, according to The New York Times. 

EPA spokesperson Tim Carroll told CNN the agency was working on plans “to accelerate the transition to a zero-emissions transportation future, protecting people and the planet,” though he did not comment on specifics. 

“Once the interagency review process is completed, the proposals will be signed, published in the Federal Register, and made available for public review and comment,” Carroll added.