Trump and Harris duel over electric vehicles
This is the introduction to Checks and Balance, a weekly subscriber-only newsletter offering exclusive insight from our correspondents in America.
Our Lexington columnist James Bennett examines the fight between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump over electric cars
On a hot summer day in 1994, I watched about 30 car salesmen—many obese, some millionaires—stumble hand in hand, blindfolded, in a Tennessee meadow. I was a reporter covering the auto industry. They were dealers and employees of General Motors’ Oldsmobile brand trying to learn the cultural ways of Saturn, GMThe world’s youngest brand, created in 1985 to pioneer new manufacturing and sales techniques in order to compete head-to-head with Japanese companies. From selling more than a million cars in 1985, Oldsmobile fell to selling 380,000 cars by 1993. Confidence declined, and the cheering and hugging that dealers were doing in Tennessee, combined with Saturn sales tactics like no-haggle pricing, meant Help change things. around.
They didn’t. Oldsmobile is gone now, and Saturn is gone too. However, smaller and more efficient, GM It eventually overcame the challenge from Japan. While I was covering the Lexington newspaper this week about the dueling between presidential candidates over electric cars, I called an old source, David Cole, an engineer, the son of a former president. GM President, and now, 87, he is chairman emeritus of the nonprofit he helped found, the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I wanted to ask if this was a move on EveIt was like the first in the industry.
“The dynamics of this are unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” he said. It’s not just about making new types of cars in new ways and learning how to sell them. The country needs a national charging system. China’s role, whether as a competitor or supplier, raises national security concerns that Japan does not. Consumers need to embrace radically different technology. “One of the most important factors is that we have reached a higher level of polarization in the political arena than we had before,” Mr. Cole said.
Previous transformations had their own political dimensions. (“Are you hungry?” read one poster seen around Detroit during the recent event. “Eat your Japanese car.”) But this time politics gets in the way. This is a factor that automakers did not anticipate, and they are struggling with its impact on sales.
It is disturbing to see the world’s richest man, who also happens to control one of the most powerful information-sharing platforms, investing so much of his money and efforts into influencing the presidential election. It is puzzling to see Elon Musk, who has done more than anyone else to accelerate the shift to electric vehicles, aligning himself with a candidate who insists “we want gasoline cars.” However, there may be a silver lining, regardless of who wins in November. If Musk ultimately chooses to be as constructive in politics as he has been in industry, rather than just continuing to revel in partisan nastiness, he will be well positioned to convince people that electric cars aren’t just for Democrats. (But he won’t be able to help much with the Amish.)