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Biden Raved About EVs to the Special Counsel: ‘Damn, They’re Quick’

He then made an unspecified “car sound.”

03/12/2024

Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

It is the great Faustian bargain of the American presidency: To lead the world’s most powerful nation, you have to give up driving forever.

For some leaders, this sacrifice can be excruciating. Given the opportunity to climb behind the wheel of a Mack truck in 2017, then-President Trump honked the horn, mimed driving, and was reported generally looking like “he wanted to steal it.” Later, in 2020, during a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the president gazed longingly at some “nice trucks” nearby and wondered aloud, “You think I could hop into one of them and drive it away? I’d love to do it. Just drive the hell outta here.”

This destiny has been especially cruel for car guy and speed junkie Joe Biden — so much so, in fact, that during his interview last fall with Robert Hur, the special counsel investigating allegations that Biden mishandled classified documents, the president complained about only being allowed to drive his beloved Corvette up and down his driveway.

According to Biden, there is at least one silver lining that comes with the highest office in the land: “Probably one of the best parts to being vice president and president, I get to drive all these, you know, electric vehicles,” the president raved to his interviewers. “I have. Damn, they’re quick.”

The transcript goes on:

President Biden: You know, think about this. You had one of those big 4x4s, the — I think it’s a Ford Bronco, whatever it is. Zero to 60 in 4.6.

Robert Hur: Yes.

Marc Krickbaum, deputy special counsel: Instant torque.

Hur: That’s fast.

Biden: Yeah. By the way, you know how it works?

(laughter)

Biden: It’s really cool.

Hur: Sir, I’d love — I would love, love to hear more about this, but I do have a few more questions to get through.

Biden: You can take 30 seconds, but you put your foot on the brake, you hit, you hit a button that’s in the — and it says “launch.”

(laughter)

Biden: You step your foot on the accelerator all the way down —

Hur: Woah.

Biden: — until it gets to about 6, 7 grand. Then all of a sudden, it will say “launch.” All you do is take your foot off the brake. (makes car sound)

[Interview transcript]

In this limited context, at least, Hur’s later questioning of the president’s mental acuity seems a little unfair. Tell me you wouldn’t make excited car noises if you had the chance to experience instant torque, especially if you’d hung up your own car keys over a decade before.

It almost — almost — makes getting elected worth it.

Blue

Jeva Lange

Jeva is a founding staff writer at Heatmap. Her writing has also appeared in The Week, where she formerly served as executive editor and culture critic, as well as in The New York Daily News, Vice, and Gothamist, among others. Jeva lives in New York City.

Sparks

The Country’s Largest Power Markets Are Getting More Gas

Three companies are joining forces to add at least a gigawatt of new generation by 2029. The question is whether they can actually do it.

Matthew Zeitlin •

02/26/2025

Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Two of the biggest electricity markets in the country — the 13-state PJM Interconnection, which spans the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, and ERCOT, which covers nearly all of Texas — want more natural gas. Both are projecting immense increases in electricity demand thanks to data centers and electrification. And both have had bouts of market weirdness and dysfunction, with ERCOT experiencing spiky prices and even blackouts during extreme weather and PJM making enormous payouts largely to gas and coal operators to lock in their “capacity,” i.e. their ability to provide power when most needed.

Now a trio of companies, including the independent power producer NRG, the turbine manufacturer GE Vernova, and a subsidiary of the construction firm Kiewit Corporation, are teaming up with a plan to bring gas-powered plants to PJM and ERCOT, the companies announced today.

The three companies said that the new joint venture “will work to advance four projects totaling over 5 gigawatts” of natural gas combined cycle plants to the two power markets, with over a gigawatt coming by 2029. The companies said that they could eventually build 10 to 15 gigawatts “and expand to other areas across the U.S.”

So far, PJM and Texas’ call for new gas has been more widely heard than answered. The power producer Calpine said last year that it would look into developing more gas in PJM, but actual investment announcements have been scarce, although at least one gas plant scheduled to close has said it would stay open.

So far, across the country, planned new additions to the grid are still overwhelmingly solar and battery storage, according to the Energy Information Administration, whose data shows some 63 gigawatts of planned capacity scheduled to be added this year, with more than half being solar and over 80% being storage.

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Biden Raved About EVs to the Special Counsel: ‘Damn, They’re Quick’

He then made an unspecified “car sound.”

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