Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday defended the Biden administration's goal with electric vehicles. For some reason, Republicans are against having 50 percent of cars on the market be electric by 2030. Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) questioned the increased cost of electric cars compared to gas-fueled vehicles.
"Just look at a Kelly Blue Book; the price of an [electric vehicle] is about $55,000", Perry said, adding that "it's actually more than that because there's $7,500 per car subsidy paid for by about $48 billion in taxes on the same people ... so it's closer to about $60,000. That's about $20,000 more than a gas-driven passenger car."
Buttigieg argued, "nobody I know, certainly not me, thinks that all or even most Americans can easily afford electric vehicles."
"That said, I'm struck by the $55,000 number that keeps going around," he said. "I knew this might come up, so I just pulled a few of the latest prices. A Chevy Bolt is an American-made 2022 EV that is $26,595. If you want a pickup truck like a Chevy Silverado EV or a Ford F-150 Lightning, the starting prices of those are $39,930 and $39,974, respectively."
Buttigieg continued to say, "the first time I got a plug-in car, for example, Chasten and I got one, it was $14,000, had about 15,000 miles on, it was a [Ford] C-Max ... it was a combo plug-in hybrid."
"But what we're seeing in terms of the dynamics now is we're close to the point -- and may actually be there on certain models and under certain circumstances -- where the extent to which your car payment would go up is actually already outweighed by the extent to which your gas bill would go down, even factoring in the cost of electricity," he added.
What a nice way to say, 'Sit the f*ck down.'
