The effort to force American car buyers to buy electric vehicles appears to be nearing an end, as billions of dollars in clean energy projects have been canceled since Donald Trump took office.
“It’s hard at the moment to be a manufacturer in the U.S. given uncertainties on tariffs, tax credits and regulations,” said Tom Taylor, senior policy analyst at Atlas Public Policy. Atlas says that “more projects were canceled in the first quarter of 2025 than in the previous two years combined,” according to the Washington Post.
Almost $8 billion in EV-related projects have been canceled, including a $1.2 billion battery factory in Georgia and a $1 billion factory in Arizona that would have made thermal barriers for batteries.
Huge subsidies were being doled out to companies to build these factories. Meanwhile, consumers aren’t buying EVs at anything near the rates that were projected during the Biden administration. Even with massive subsidies for new EVs, there was only a modest increase in new EV car sales.
Despite the hype from the Biden administration, the plan to force car buyers to go electric was dependent on the EPA’s draconian tailpipe emission standards that would have made gas-powered cars far more expensive.
Trump is going to cancel the EPA tailpipe rules, slash funding for charging stations, and eliminate subsidies for EV vehicles. Vehicle manufacturers are going to have to build their EVs to compete against gas-powered cars head-to-head without the government’s thumb on the scale.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, praised Trump’s move to roll back EV regulations. Despite generous federal incentives, she said, many Americans were not buying electric vehicles.
“Costly, mandated EVs make poor people poorer and less safe,” Furchtgott-Roth said.
Taylor Rogers, the White House assistant press secretary, said in an email that the administration’s approach would benefit Americans.
“The President’s brilliant economic agenda is an all-encompassing plan to revive our economy by unleashing American energy, implementing tariffs to level the playing field, and bringing billions of dollars in historic investments to America’s manufacturing sector,” Rogers said.
Even before Donald Trump took office, some battery and EV companies were pulling back, seeing consumer demand slacken. Battery maker KORE Power had been seeking an $850 million loan from the government to build a factory in Arizona. Instead, early last year, it decided to refurbish existing facilities.
In addition, EV startups Nikola Motors and Canoo recently filed for bankruptcy. Nothing that Trump did contributed to those companies going under.
“The EV outlook was already looking pretty bearish before the election,” said Trevor Houser, a partner at Rhodium Group in energy and climate.” Houser added, “Any downside in the outlook would naturally lead to some battery cancellations.”
If companies want to build EVs, they’re going to have to find the incentives to do it without reaching into the pockets of taxpayers. The same holds true for building charging stations. Biden’s 2022 plan to spend $7.5 billion to build 500,000 electric charging stations resulted in less than a hundred being built by the end of 2024. A mountain of DEI red tape and states moving at a snail’s pace to decide where charging stations in their states should go made the boondoggle a laughing stock across the country.
Americans will be ready to buy EVs when they are competitive with gasoline-fueled cars in all ways, and not when the government dictates to them that they must buy electric.
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