by NICK POPE at dailycaller.com
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Acting Administrator Ann Carlson, whose agency proposed a new rule Friday that would make internal combustion engine vehicles more expensive, previously advocated policies that would raise energy costs to spur the green transition.
Carlson, formerly a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, has a history of advocating for policies that could raise energy prices and burden Americans with new costs, viewing such policies as an effective mechanism to alter consumer behavior to support the green energy transition. NHTSA proposed updates to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards Friday, which would raise the costs of gas-powered vehicles for American consumers in the aim of reducing emissions and countering climate change.
While NHTSA estimates that the rule proposal would save Americans a cumulative $50 billion in fuel costs over the long term, consumers would incur up to $1,000 upfront costs for vehicles and it would incentivize manufacturers to push electric vehicles (EVs) on consumers, according to the rule proposal and experts interviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The average new EV is more than $4,000 more expensive than the average new internal combustion engine vehicle, according to July data from Kelley Blue Book.
“This is an EV mandate and further evidence that the elites want normal people to hoof it or take the bus,” Dan Kish, senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, previously said of the rule proposal to the DCNF.
The proposed rule will effectively require auto manufacturers to double the average fleet fuel efficiency, from the Environmental Protection Agency’s estimated 2022 efficiency level of 26.4 miles per gallon to “potentially reaching an average fleet fuel economy of 58 miles per gallon by 2032,” according to a Friday Department of Transportation (DOT) press release announcing the proposal.
“Bureaucrats like Carlson have long believed punitive measures like higher prices and regulatory red-tape are the best means to force the green agenda,” Daniel Turner, director of Power The Future, told the DCNF. “The Biden Administration sees the administrative state as their enforcement arm for an agenda they know the American people categorically reject.”
“Only the wealthy are immune” to the increased costs ushered in by bureaucrats like Carlson, Turner continued, adding that “middle-class America is getting crushed, and so Ms. Carlson must be asked how many people must suffer until the ‘good’ part of the green agenda kicks in.
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