By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. government agencies failed to meet the Biden administration’s fleet electric vehicle purchase targets and bought more than four times as many gas-powered models, a Government Accountability Office report released on Tuesday said.
In the 2023 budget year, agencies bought 25,300 gas-powered vehicles and a total of 5,500 EVs and plug-in hybrids — 60% of 11 agencies’ combined target of 9,500, the report said.
President Joe Biden in December 2021 issued an executive order directing the government to end purchases of gas-powered vehicles by 2035 and mandating that all light-duty federal acquisitions by the end of 2027 be electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles.
The GAO said officials from nine of 11 selected agencies said meeting the EV targets “will largely depend on factors outside of the facilitating agencies’ control,” including the status of charging infrastructure and whether sufficient zero-emission vehicles are available for federal purchase.
In 2022, the General Services Administration estimated that the federal government might need over 100,000 charging ports to transition the federal fleet to zero-emission vehicles. But as of November, 10,500 charging ports had been activated nationwide by federal agencies, with installation of about 52,500 charging ports in process, the GAO said.
The GSA said government EV orders in 2023 were about 63% higher than in 2022, and in the first quarter of the 2024 budget year the government ordered 4,000 EVs, or nearly 30% of all cars and trucks. GSA EV orders include Tesla Model Ys and Model 3s, Chevrolet Equinox EVs and Ford Mach-Es.
The GSA and the White House did not immediately comment.
Biden’s order covered about 380,000 federal vehicles. It does not cover vehicles of the U.S. Postal Service, which is an independent government entity. Last week, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy defended the Postal Service plan to buy some 66,000 electric vehicles by 2028 using $3 billion in funds from Congress to subsidize EV charging and vehicle purchases.
Reuters reported on Monday that President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is recommending sweeping changes to cut off support for electric vehicles including eliminating requirements that federal agencies purchase EVs.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Leslie Adler)
