The electric car backlash could be about to take its biggest scalp yet

Kamala Harris can’t u-turn away from the central logic of her environmental policy

You certainly have to admire the breathtaking speed at which Kamala Harris seems to change her positions. She thought Joe Biden was in great shape for a second term until suddenly he wasn’t. She was vehemently opposed to fracking, and then suddenly she was all in favour of it. And now, in the kind of screeching U-turn you could only execute in a top of the range, big engine sports car, she doesn’t want to tell people what cars to drive.
And like on all the other occasions, it’s unlikely to convince anyone. If you fear that a Harris presidency will witness the final demise of the internal combustion engine, it’s not time to relax yet.  
“Contrary to what my opponent is suggesting, I will never tell you what kind of car you have to drive,” Harris told a rally in Michigan last week, recasting herself as an unlikely champion of automotive libertarianism. She is in the state again today, clearly fretful that it is trending towards Donald Trump.
And part of the reason appears to be a backlash among voters against the Biden administration’s green policies. Trump campaign ads have warned that Harris wants to ban all petrol-powered cars, both preventing consumers from buying the vehicles they want, as well as potentially damaging Michigan’s automotive industry.  
As falling sales in Europe and North America make clear, EVs are not proving as popular as people thought they would be. The range is too uncertain, and both insurance and the vehicles themselves can be expensive, especially now that tariffs have been slapped on the cheaper Chinese models. People need cars to get around, and if they are forced to buy something they don’t really want, then that is never going to be popular.
So it’s hardly surprising that Harris has changed course – rhetorically at least. But there are two big problems with her sudden change of heart.
First, she still supports all the other policies designed over the last four years to support the transition to EVs. They are huge grants for the manufacturers. There are subsidies for people who buy an EV. A tonne of government cash had been poured into building the charging network. And crucially the regulator has set tough EV sales targets for car-makers to hit in a few years’ time.
In other words, the policy of the Biden-Harris administrations is indeed that, over time, people will be constrained in terms of the cars they buy – if only because internal combustion engine vehicles will become increasingly unaffordable.  
Second, just as it is hard to see what changed Harris’s views on fracking, except that it cost her votes in Pennsylvania, it is hard to understand what has changed her rhetoric on EVs, except that it is costing her votes in Michigan. Voters are looking for honesty in a candidate, and a willingness to stick with an unpopular position if you believe it is the right one. Harris is flip flopping from one policy to the next depending on the latest results from a focus group. Very quickly that is going to fatally undermine her reputation for honesty.
EVs might have been very popular a few years ago in Harris’ native California. But they increasingly look like a niche product. And as the backlash against them grows, they may well claim their biggest victim of all – and end up costing Harris the presidency.