Idaho Congressman Seeks to Save Gas Powered Vehicles

Is there anything more American than a gas-powered muscle car, monster truck, or a massive semi-truck? Idahoans love their big trucks and look forward to the local racing season at Firebird Raceway and the Meridian Speedway.

However, if Joe Biden's Administration gets its way, the backbone of the American economy, semi-trucks, could go the way of the dinosaurs. The president announced a new mandate that thirty-four percent of semi trucks will be electric. Environmentalists tout the move as a way to cut carbon emissions by millions.

The New York Times reports that Biden's environmental push would cover not fifty but a hundred types of vehicles, including tractor-trailers, ambulances, R.V.s, garbage trucks, and moving vans.

The president's and his allies' push mirrors California's. Like California's mandate, it lacks common economic sense. The technology isn't readily available to power massive trucks that compare to diesel-powered tractor-trailers.

The government, the trucking industry, and everyone else will have to invest billions in creating the infrastructure of charging stations to fuel the E.V. trucks. The cost of goods transported by truck will skyrocket.

Idaho Congressman Russ Fulcher will introduce legislation to end the Biden Mandate.

"Biden's latest effort to push electric vehicles is completely out of line and will eliminate consumer choice, grow our reliance on foreign adversaries, directly impact transportation for Idahoans, and have lasting impacts on the U.S. supply chain," Fulcher said. "Rural communities around Idaho cannot implement the massive grid expansion needed to support the electrification of heavy-duty trucks.

A few more details courtesy of the Institute for Energy Research:

'The cost of electric trucks are typically two to three times more expensive than diesel trucks. Truckers will also have to invest $620 billion for charging infrastructure and it will likely cost utilities $370 billion to upgrade their networks. Replacing diesel trucks with electric will cost the trucking industry tens of billion dollars each year and truckers will need to pass these costs on to the customers.

About 1.4 million chargers will have to be installed by 2032 to achieve the EPA's mandate, about 15,000 a month.'