Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Electric Vehicles

The New EPA Car Standards Could Mean Even More Hybrids

It all comes down to math.

An EV and tailpipes.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Last week, the Biden administration announced its final car emission standards, aimed at pushing the auto industry to create more zero-emission vehicles. While there’s plenty in the 1,200-page document for policy wonks, politicians, environmental advocates, and automakers to hem and haw over, there’s at least one thing no one seems too bothered about: The new emissions rules stand to boost plug-in and conventional hybrid sales, thanks in part to some small changes to how their emissions are considered within the mix of an automaker’s fleet.

To recap: The biggest headline change from the proposed rule to the final one is that automakers now have a slower ramp toward reducing their fleet-wide emissions by roughly 50% come 2032. A handful of sensational headlines notwithstanding, the new rules do not mandate that automakers build and sell only EVs. The point is to reduce tailpipe emissions. How automakers go about it is their business.

“Automakers may see it fit to introduce more hybrids and plug-in hybrids, along with some electrics,” Thomas Boylan, regulatory director at the Zero Emissions Transportation Association, told me. “Or if they can find the engineering capacity to create an internal combustion engine that doesn't produce tailpipe emissions, that's a viable pathway to these standards,” he added. That said, how automakers account for the emissions from their fleets — and specifically from hybrids and plug-in hybrids — is not open to interpretation.

When plug-in hybrids are running on battery power, the Environmental Protection Agency counts those as zero-emission miles. Historically, the EPA has assumed that everyone with a PHEV plugs it in every day and is therefore maximizing its battery-powered mileage, however more recent studies have shown that is probably not actually the case.

“There's some mixed data out there in terms of how frequently people who own these [PHEV] vehicles plug them in, and that's a big factor in how much compliance they should get,” Chris Harto, the senior policy analyst for transportation and energy at Consumer Reports, told me.

“How much compliance they should get” became a key question in how the new car emissions standards would account for PHEVs. The draft rule issued last year had proposed reducing the amount of compliance credit automakers would get for plug-ins starting in model year 2027 to account for the discrepancy in battery miles traveled. But the final rule delayed that phase-in until model year 2031, in order “to provide additional stability for the program, and to give manufacturers ample time to transition to the new compliance calculation.”

Hybrid and PHEV vehicle sales have been surprisingly robust over the past few years, as Jesse Jenkins pointed out on Heatmap’s Shift Key podcast. Hybrid electric sales were about on par with battery electric sales in 2023, at around 1.1 million vehicles each, Jenkins said, which is “way higher than what we expected.”

As of February, plug-in and traditional hybrid sales were growing five times faster than EV sales, Morgan Stanley reported. The Argonne National Laboratory also found that during the same month, PHEV and hybrid sales rose to more than 130,000 all together. To put that in perspective, last year's record EV sales alone averaged just about 100,000 per month across all brands. These robust sales numbers, combined with the new EPA tailpipe emission rules, could continue to drive growth in hybrid and PHEV sales, even as EV sales growth cools.

“I think a lot of automakers underappreciated the big bump in hybrid sales that many people have rightly celebrated in 2023. That huge jump in hybrid sales coincides directly with a huge jump in EPA emission standards from 2022 to 2023,” Harto told me. In 2021, the Biden administration revised a Trump-era rule that sought to weaken vehicle emission standards. Those revised rules, which took effect for the 2023 model year, were 10% tighter than the year prior.

“These standards have a history of pushing automakers to deliver vehicles that save consumers money on fuel,” Harto said. “I don't think we would have seen the jump in hybrid sales that we saw last year without the jump in emission standards in 2023.”

Still, he noted, “The more hybrids (or other gasoline efficiency improvements) and PHEVs automakers build, the fewer BEVs they will have to build to comply.”

This will likely slow the EV adoption curve, but if it leads to more and cheaper plug-in hybrids than we would have had otherwise, it could help U.S. consumers get more comfortable with the idea of plugging in rather than filling up their cars.

“I think the final rule reflects more of an understanding that there will be more hybrid electric vehicle penetration rates over the next few years,” Boylan told me. While the true cost and emissions savings are in fully battery electric vehicles, it might take consumers a minute to get there. “I think, ultimately, a PHEV offers an opportunity to educate a consumer on what an electric vehicle might be able to do to meet their personal needs, and that creates a pathway to a true BEV purchase, on the next vehicle.”

Yellow

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Spotlight

Trump’s Onshore Wind Pause Is Still On

Six months in, federal agencies are still refusing to grant crucial permits to wind developers.

Donald Trump and a wind turbine.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Federal agencies are still refusing to process permit applications for onshore wind energy facilities nearly six months into the Trump administration, putting untold billions in energy infrastructure investments at risk.

On Trump’s first day in office, he issued two executive orders threatening the wind energy industry – one halting solar and wind approvals for 60 days and another commanding agencies to “not issue new or renewed approvals, rights of way, permits, leases or loans” for all wind projects until the completion of a new governmental review of the entire industry. As we were first to report, the solar pause was lifted in March and multiple solar projects have since been approved by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, I learned in March that at least some transmission for wind farms sited on private lands may have a shot at getting federal permits, so it was unclear if some arms of the government might let wind projects proceed.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Climate

AM Briefing: EPA Reportedly to Roll Back Power Plant Emission Regulations Today

On power plant emissions, Fervo, and a UK nuclear plant

EPA Will Reportedly Roll Back Power Plant Emission Regulations Today
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: A week into Atlantic hurricane season, development in the basin looks “unfavorable through JuneCanadian wildfires have already burned more land than the annual average, at over 3.1 million hectares so farRescue efforts resumed Wednesday in the search for a school bus swept away by flash floods in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.

THE TOP FIVE

1. EPA to weaken Biden-era power plant pollution regulations today

EPA

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Politics

Why Big Tech Is Keeping Quiet on Clean Energy

Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and the rest only have so much political capital to spend.

Tech company heads.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

When Donald Trump first became a serious Presidential candidate in 2015, many big tech leaders sounded the alarm. When the U.S. threatened to exit the Paris Agreement for the first time, companies including Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook (now Meta) took out full page ads in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal urging Trump to stay in. He didn’t — and Elon Musk, in particular, was incensed.

But by the time specific climate legislation — namely the Inflation Reduction Act — was up for debate in 2022, these companies had largely clammed up. When Trump exited Paris once more, the response was markedly muted.

Keep reading...Show less