Why does technology need to become so partisan? Lately in America, it seems like anything can turn into a political football overnight, but that really doesn't make sense for electric vehicles. They're just another way to get around. And while one side of the aisle may resent how their growth is driven by toughening emissions and fuel economy rules, EVs also represent some 200,000 new manufacturing jobs in this country, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.
And that's how a new ad from a group of bipartisan political operators aims to convince swing-state voters not to buy the anti-EV rhetoric that's out there.
The group is called the EV Politics Project, a 501c4 non-profit led by Mike Murphy, a Republican political consultant who worked on campaigns for Sen. John McCain, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mitt Romney and others; David B. Hill, a researcher and former faculty member at Texas A&M University; and Joe Sacks, a former aide to Democratic Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo.
It's a pretty cross-party group, in other words. And InsideEVs readers may remember Murphy from the op-ed he penned earlier this year about how to get more Republican voters into EVs. As Murphy's own research has shown, partisan politics are driving knee-jerk reactions to cleaner cars even in states where they're creating significant job growth.
So the new ad, embedded above, will begin airing in Michigan shortly, and the group hopes to air it in Georgia soon as well. Michigan is an obvious place to start; besides being the home of the U.S. auto industry (as well as numerous new battery plants), it's also a crucial swing state in the election.
If re-elected, President Donald Trump—who's clearly a target of this ad—has vowed to repeal the EV tax credits and possibly the incentives driving EV manufacturing under the Biden Administration's signature legislative achievement, the Inflaton Reduction Act. Moreover, his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, has been targeting one battery plant in Michigan, linking fears about China to its continued development. Trump's opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is widely expected to continue the Biden Administration's stricter fuel economy and emissions rules driving EV growth, as well as the policies that support their manufacturing and purchases.
But Trump's critics, Murphy among them, say that if America slows down on EVs, it will only further cede that technology to China's already iron grip on it.
“The biggest secret in American politics is how many good new manufacturing and technology jobs the move to electric vehicles has created in Michigan, in Georgia and across America," Murphy said in a statement. "It’s time to make that good news famous, and remind voters that when politicians mislead voters about EVs, they are hurting American jobs. Nobody wins then but China."
And then another one goes after anti-EV campaigns propogated by fossil fuel companies, also aimed at Michigan voters:
If the ads do air in Georgia, they'll target voters in a key swing state that could decide the election—and one that stands to benefit from tens of thousands of new EV-driven jobs from the Hyundai Motor Group alone. But as Politico recently reported, many of those voters like the jobs but aren't swayed to vote for policies that support them.
In the end, it's unlikely that these EV factories or the North American-made cars themselves will vanish overnight if Trump is reelected. But public policy, tax incentives and other "carrot" factors are driving a battery industry that America is decades behind on. Without them, China's EV industry—which has received immense state support—will only continue to accelerate. Whether American voters want that to happen or not will be up to them in November.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
