Opinion

editorial

By Post Editorial Board

In a blatant game of good-cop, bad-cop, President Biden this week rolled out new auto-emissions mandates that aren’t as brutal as his Environmental Protection Agency proposed last year, but still guarantee huge pain for automakers and consumers.

More game-playing: The rules don’t spell out how many all-electric and hybrid vehicles to produce; they just impose carbon-emissions averages for the total cars and trucks sold, which works out to ordering that two-thirds of all new vehicles be electric or hybrid vehicles by 2032, with lesser quotas along the way.

Yet EVs already pile up on dealers’ lots, even though Ford, GM and the rest cut prices and lose money on every sale, turning profits only by hiking prices on gas-powered vehicles — all to meet mild mandates from DC.

EVs (mostly Teslas) made up just over 7% of all car sales last year; hybrids, another 9%. Biden’s “good-cop” rule would have them combine for 36% by 2027, just three years away.

Even at that level, cross-subsidies to meet Biden’s goals will push internal-combustion-vehicle prices into the stratosphere, and likely still not get consumers to play along; the 2032 mandate is beyond impossible to meet.

Instead, Americans will keep older cars on the road far longer; even paying through the nose for clunkers and repairs will be the better bet.

And, by the way, even if the feds find some way to rid the road of gas-fueled cars, most US electricity will still come from carbon fuels, which generate 80%+ of power now.

Wind and solar electric-generation shows no sign of being able to expand fast enough to even meet current rising demand for power — let alone the nation’s needs as the greens push us all toward electric heat, stoves and cars.

All of which means Biden’s plans won’t even bring the greenhouse-gas reductions his minions imagine — unless the plan is to leave us all shivering in the dark with no cars we can drive.

By endorsing Biden, the United Auto Workers has betrayed those of its members who still are auto workers: His push for a “green transition” is already killing their jobs, and it’s only getting started — and environmentalists whine that he’s not aggressive enough.

The president, meanwhile, is betraying not just his vows to stand by union workers, but his claims to be pro-consumer.

Oh, and he asked his economists to take an honest look at how all this will goose inflation?

This is what he’s doing when he’s still desperate to eek out enough votes to win in November; if he pulls that off, and no longer has to care about what disasters his policies bring, his second term will mean even more misery for average Americans than his first.