If you thought Joe Biden's electric vehicle mandates were unpopular (and they are) just wait until you see the even more aggressive plans that Kamala Harris has in store if she manages to be elected to the White House. Rather than giving in to a popular lack of demand, Harris intends to double down, accelerating the schedule for converting the American fleet of vehicles at an even more rapid pace wherever possible. The Democrats still aren't quite crazy enough to try to make possession of a gas-powered vehicle illegal, but they will bully the automakers to ensure that a full 50% of all vehicles sold are EVs and they will use the regulatory power of federal agencies to enforce their will. It's almost as if Harris and her party are daring the American people not to vote for them. (Free Beacon)

Vice President Kamala Harris, who has emerged as the presumptive 2024 Democratic nominee for president, favors a far more aggressive plan to mandate electric vehicles than even President Joe Biden, whose EV policies have seen declining popularity both in swing states and nationwide.

During her 2020 presidential campaign, Harris vowed to implement climate policies ensuring 50 percent of all new passenger vehicles sold are EVs by 2030 and 100 percent are EVs by 2035, an archived copy of her campaign website shows. She also backed a mandate requiring all new vehicle purchases for corporate fleets, transportation networks, and heavy-duty vehicles be electric by 2030.

Months after she announced in January 2019 that she would run for president, Harris also cosponsored the so-called Zero-Emission Vehicles Act, a bill that was later modified to include language mandating 43 percent of car sales are electric by 2027 and 100 percent are electric by 2035.

How can anyone realistically believe that we can get EVs to account for fully half of all new passenger vehicle sales by 2030? That's barely six years from now. And then she wants to get to 100% five years later, functionally ending the internal combustion engine market in barely a decade. The same mandates would apply to civilian corporate fleets, mass transportation vehicles, and even heavy-duty construction vehicles and equipment.

Of course, the same would apply to the military, where the executive branch can truly flex its muscles in terms of issuing orders and mandates. Get ready for electric tanks and armored personnel carriers on the battlefield, despite the fact that nobody has managed to build one yet that could remain functional in a war zone. Such a mandate would mean that the size and cost of each battalion would balloon, since you don't tend to find recharging stations out in the wilderness where most battles are fought, so recharging vehicles would need to follow the troops around everywhere. If the enemy has the common sense that God gave a goat, they will direct their drones at the charging vehicles first and the entire force will grind to a halt shortly thereafter.

Fortunately, this is a topic that the pollsters cover on a regular basis. One of the latest surveys revealed that nearly 60% of likely voters in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin oppose bans on gas vehicles and only a relatively tiny percentage of them are enthusiastic supporters of the idea. Even a majority of the people who currently own an EV (as opposed to a hybrid) say that they still experience "range anxiety" and they are forced to plan their travel around the availability of charging stations, many of which have chargers that either fail to operate or are incompatible with their vehicles. Drivers who participated in a survey by JD Powers reported that they encountered nonfunctional chargers 21% of the time when attempting to recharge their cars.

Donald Trump has already been jumping on this subject on the campaign trail. You can expect him to start hitting Kamala Harris hard about it in debates and campaign speeches. This is a winning issue for conservatives by a wide margin. It's something of a mystery why the Democrats would continue to cling to these plans unless they are just doing it out of habit at this point and can't help themselves. Is this the most important issue in the minds of voters this year? Almost certainly not. But it represents yet another way that Kamala Harris and the Democrats want to Make America Crappier Again.