Last month, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) questioned Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on electric vehicles during a House Transportation and Infrasture.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you for the plug of my bill, and the chair recognizes Mr. Huffman for five minutes.
00:05Thank you, Madam Chair, and Mr. Secretary, welcome back to the committee.
00:10You are breaking good news in incredible ways to communities all over this country because of the
00:15legislation we passed in the last Congress and because of your good work implementing it. So
00:20thank you for that. But some of the questions that you've had from across the aisle have been,
00:26frankly, just casting about wildly to malign electric vehicles. And I was surprised to hear
00:33the suggestion that EV battery fires are somehow a great risk to public health, but no discussion
00:41of the fossil fuel infrastructure and vehicles and other fossil fuel aspects that are exploding
00:49and burning and harming and killing people every day in this country. Could you just sort of speak
00:55to the relative threat to human life, safety and public health as between EV batteries and
01:02all of the fossil fuel vehicles, tankers, trucks, pipelines and refineries that are
01:09going boom seemingly every day somewhere in America?
01:12Well, it would certainly be absurd to dismiss the danger and damage that has been associated
01:19with flammable liquids being used to propel our vehicles over the course of the last 100 years.
01:24Of course, there's a framework of regulation to try to minimize that danger and harm,
01:29just as we're building a framework of regulation to make sure that any harm or risk associated
01:35with electric or any other propulsion, hydrogen, you name it, is appropriately managed. We just
01:41don't view any of those risks as an excuse to stick to dirty and expensive fuels and older
01:46technology that, again, as we've been shown in sometimes shocking fashion, can lead to the
01:53destruction of property and life in incidents, not to mention the destruction of property and
01:58life being documented as a consequence of the pollution.
02:01Well said. My colleague from Pennsylvania, Mr. Perry, kind of broke the fact check machine with
02:07some of his attacks on electric vehicles. He stated that the cost of electric vehicles is going up.
02:13Just for the record, Mr. Secretary, I believe that's false. Can you tell us what the cost
02:20of electric vehicles is doing these days?
02:22Cost of electric vehicles is going down, and we have even seen research indicating that if you
02:28look apples to apples, which can be a little challenging, but the basic determination when
02:36you compare an EV to a comparable internal combustion engine, according to J.D. Power,
02:42is about $53,600 for an EV, $54,400 on average for the gas vehicle. That's before you account
02:51for the $2,000 or so a year that an EV owner can save in fuel costs, and the $6,000 or so
02:58in lifetime lower maintenance and repair costs, simply because an EV tends to have fewer moving
03:03parts.
03:04Right. According to my just quick Google search just now, new EV prices are down year-over-year
03:1118 percent, which is much more than for non-EVs over the same year-over-year period. And for
03:17used EVs, the prices are down even more, 27 percent decline in price year-over-year. So
03:24is that consistent with your understanding of where we're headed on prices?
03:27Yes, and I think it's intuitive if you consider how new EV technology is relative to internal
03:34combustion technology. In other words, any improvements we see in cost today on an ice
03:38engine are after 100 years of refinement, whereas the stage we're at with EVs might be better
03:43compared to where we were when internal combustion got as far as the Model T. More work will
03:49happen that will make them more efficient, and it's not surprising that that cost curve is
03:53moving down faster for EVs than for ice cars right now.
03:56My colleague also suggested the federal government was buying the majority of EVs in America. You
04:01thankfully put that in – I think there's a math problem over there,
04:05because it was 0.5 percent according to –
04:07That's the most recent data that I've seen.
04:09Yeah, pretty far from a majority. On the issue of why bother, because my colleague from Arkansas
04:17pointed out that if we electrified our transportation system overnight here in
04:22the United States, it would still be only about 1 percent of global emissions. My understanding
04:27is that while U.S. emissions are overall declining, the transportation sector is still
04:32going the wrong way. Could you just expand on the sort of why bother argument that has been
04:38suggested today?
04:40I think any time there's a national effort or certainly a human effort that's going to require
04:46a lot of different people to hit their marks in order to succeed, that should motivate us to go
04:51above and beyond, not to sit on our hands. America's never been the kind of country that
04:55waited for other countries to solve a problem. And I believe we need to lead in this regard.
05:00As we do, again, we'll see not only climate benefits but a benefit in terms of those deaths
05:04from particulate matter that I mentioned earlier.
05:07Thank you, Mr. Secretary. And just to close with an invitation to my district in Humboldt County,
05:13where you awarded a $426 million infra grant to modernize a port that will support the
05:21floating offshore wind industry. We'd love to show you that incredible project. It certainly
05:26puts the light of the notion that this administration has a build-nothing-ever
05:31agenda. And with that, I yield back.