A lobbying group for companies that make and sell gasoline has quietly been spending millions of dollars to help make electric vehicles a wedge issue in the presidential and congressional elections.
The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) says it has spent more than $10 million on ads this election year that go after Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic Senate candidates for their support of a variety of policies designed to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles. Although the ads are critical of Harris and the Democrats, they don’t explicitly advocate for any candidates to be elected or defeated, so they are not subject to the Federal Election Commission’s reporting requirements. AFPM’s donors are not public, but its members include many companies that make money by selling gas, including ExxonMobil, Citgo, and Valero.
The ads oppose what they call “the Biden-Harris car ban” and the “EV mandate,” a misleading reference to a “technology agnostic” rule finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) earlier this year that would toughen tailpipe emissions standards for gasoline cars over a period of several years in order to create a market shift toward electric vehicles.
The EPA rule does not mandate which propulsion system vehicle manufactures must use to meet the emissions standards, but it has provided an estimate of how manufacturers are likely to adapt. EPA expects the regulation to bring EVs to between 35% and 56% of the new car market by 2032, after the original timeline of emissions tightening proposed by the EPA in 2023 was slowed in the final rule after industry pushback. The EPA also estimates that by 2032 its regulation will bring internal combustion engine vehicles down to between 17% and 29% of the market, with the rest of the market going to hybrids.
“Vice President Kamala Harris wanted to end sales of all new gas-powered vehicles by 2035, taking away our choices and enforcing the extreme standards of her home state California nationwide,” says one of the ads. “Call Sen. Jon Tester and tell him to stop the Biden-Harris car ban,” the ad finishes.
