GM CEO Mary Barra ‘ought to be worried’ about this: Dagen McDowell

If California gets its way every driver in the state is going to be driving an EV by 2035 whether they like it or not. But now one of the big three car makers are desperately trying to fight that plan. They say the country's most aggressive electric vehicle mandate is not aligned with market realities. Translation California is biting off more than it can chew and the numbers don't lie. GM is right. Evie sales are falling off a cliff and according to California's own EV goals they are widely behind schedule. Evie should be 35 percent of all auto sales by 2026. As of now they only account for 20 percent. That's a lot of ground to make up Phil since this is an energy related story I'm going to come straight to you on this. And the first question that I have when I read these headlines from GM is wow you're speaking up now because I didn't hear you when Joe Biden was trying to do all this. No no. In fact if memory serves me they got a 500 million dollar check to retool the factories. Oh you know we're shocked. I remember. But you and I have talked about this before. I mean this was never doable in the first place. This is an impossible green dream. Right. And now all of a sudden GM is saying we can't do this because we've got to go back to the real world. And unless the government keeps spending those checks like they tried to put in the big energy bill right. A few extra green energy dollars. This isn't going to happen. Yeah. And something's happening under President Trump too. David you know obviously he's trying to roll back some of the standards that the Biden administration was putting in place and he's telling everybody it's OK to pause on this. We can still invest in it and hope for the future but it's OK to adjust these timelines. And as soon as he did that not only the car companies but even some of the consumers were able to say OK we don't have to do this right now. All everybody knew it wasn't working. Everybody everybody except the people in the Biden administration. I had Pete Buttigieg on about a year ago and he was talking about how people love their EVs and we were right on target with with moving to EV transitioning to EVs. It just wasn't true. The numbers Trump the Trump folks are looking at the numbers and the numbers don't lie. And nor do the figures that the car companies Dodge just announced that they're getting rid of their their EV charger. Now why anybody would buy an electric charger when you want to hear that boom boom you know that charges do. I mean you don't get that from me. So they weren't selling. I think they sold nineteen hundred last year which was way below what they expected. So they're pulling the EV charger. It's happening with car companies all over the place. You just look at the numbers. You can't create a market. You have to go with the market. Yeah absolutely. Dean what do you think of this. I mean it's a California story but it's a bigger story to Mary Barra. So you say less. Yes yes. Yeah I always get that wrong. Probably on purpose. A GM actually joined the lawsuit or sided with the president Trump's lawsuit. His administration sued in 2019 supporting a federal standard. For emissions to Trump California because California has always tried to Bigfoot all the other states. And right now there are only about 11 other states that line up with California on this electric vehicle mandate. Even Vermont has fallen by the wayside and jettisoned its EV push. So General Motors joined the Trump administration on a single national standard for fuel economy and emissions. Oh but then in early 2021 what happened in 2021. Joe Biden GM withdrew its support for the Trump era lawsuit and came out and announced. Oh let's let's embrace with open arms. Joe Biden's EV push. Mary Barra quote. We are confident that the ambitious electrification goals we have set are aligned with the goals of the Biden administration. And GM publicly supported the EPA's tailpipe emissions rules which would force Americans to buy electric vehicles because it was going to force the car companies to make. Well two thirds of all new vehicles in seven seven years from today would have to be electric in order to meet those tailpipe emissions regulations. So by 2032 which Lee Zeldin at the EPA and the new Trump administration have completely ripped up. Hallelujah from on high. But again this is how Mary Barra runs GM. The wind and she ought to be worried about the hundreds of thousands of large SUVs and even trucks the Suburban the Homeschool aid. I mean escalate the GMC the the Tahoe I think is one of them but the GMC they have been recalled. There have been engine problems and they're also waiting for transmission repair. There's a part that they're waiting for and the dealers have told all the owners of these large SUVs like Uber drivers to just come and park their their vehicles for a couple of months and maybe the part will show up or maybe they can get them a new transmission. Two months they're told to park. Go and look at a dealer in the back of a dealer and see the lots are just filled with people's SUVs. Maybe she ought to be worried about that. Yeah. Meantime Taylor EV sales fell 5 percent in April. The wider U.S. car market grew by 10 percent. So that tells you what the consumer is saying to all these points. Exactly which is why we've always talked about unfortunately the way California goes the rest of the country goes because let's I'm going to let's hope I'm not going to get my dad thrown in jail for this. California had that weird rule for the shower heads right before we could make showers great again. So what did he do. Ship the shower head into Arizona and drive it across the border because the California rules are nuts. But it's harder to do that with a car. So if you have these strict limits on cars GM has to make the car to meet the California requirements. And then eventually the rest of the country has to adopt that because you can't make a different EV emission standard for California and then the 49 other states. Right. That doesn't work. So that was always the worry with these strict California limits. When you bring up EV sales the free market had solved this problem. Tesla had created at the time an awesome EV that was at the time revolutionary and they had solved a market. They had solved a customer need that was there and present without a ton of federal government had learned to do a lot in the Fremont plan in California. But then the bailouts come and the loans and the handouts from the government and big government gets involved. We had just stepped back the free market and capitalism and Elon Musk had solved that need when there was the need without forcing it on customer people who wanted it available to them. And hybrids are a great example too. And there were several companies that were making those but they kind of shoved hybrids to the side to say you need to push the pedal on the EVs when people said what was wrong with the hybrid. I actually like that. All right. You get. Oh by the way GM still owes us 11 more than 11 billion dollars for that bailout. Right. And you get a max bang for your buck in terms of the rare earth and raw materials used in a hybrid versus electric vehicle. Yeah. Meantime if you've got an interest in energy be sure to tune in to Fox Business this Wednesday. Yeah. Hosting a one hour special called reenergizing America.