President Trump hasn’t minced his words—or his policy—in declaring that he doesn’t think electric cars are a good idea.
At a Thursday night rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump took his electric-car criticism to a new (and somewhat hard-to-follow) level, jumping from jabs about the Green New Deal to a suggestion that the policy will limit the number of vehicles per household.
“No more aeroplanes, no more cows, one car per family," he said, adding: “You know, I don’t think one car per family in Michigan plays too well, do you?”
Trump then sounded for a moment like he was channeling some thoughts of his own about range anxiety: “And it’s got to be of course an electric car, even if it only goes...160 miles? What do you do with 160 miles...Darling, where do I get a charge?”
2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV pre-production
The Trump Administration has already been on the offensive against GM. The automaker announced a wave of manufacturing changes in November, and followed that this month with the announcement that it would invest $300 million in its Michigan plant that assembles the Chevrolet Bolt EV, to bring a second electric vehicle there that had originally been planned for manufacture outside the U.S.
“All-electric is not going to work,” Trump said late last year, as part of a criticism of GM’s strategy to transition to more electric cars.
“It’s wonderful to have it as a percentage of your cars, but going into this model that she’s doing I think is a mistake,” said Trump at that time, referring to GM CEO Mary Barra.
[Ed note: There is no such mention of any attempt to limit the number of cars a family might have (or to limit the number of cars or vehicles) in the full text of the Green New Deal, which you can see here.]
