Carney on ‘Kudlow’: Electric Vehicles Are Pushing Up Auto Insurance Prices

The Biden administration’s push for electric vehicles (EVs) is exacerbating the country’s inflationary woes by driving up the price of auto insurance, Breitbart Economics Editor John Carney said in a Thursday interview with Fox Business host Larry Kudlow.

Kudlow noted that the Biden administration’s new environmental rule aimed at eliminating gas-powered vehicles is “inflationary” in practice.

“You wipe out gas-powered cars and stick EVs in, that is inflationary. You get nothing but higher prices for everything across the board,” he said.

Carney agreed and highlighted the inflationary pressures EVs are already having on auto insurance.

“A lot of people have been noticing that auto insurance is way up,” he said. “The more you get [of EVs], the higher auto insurance comes out because EVs are very expensive to repair once you get in a wreck.”

“So, you’re going to see that auto insurance number keep climbing,” he continued. “I’m told by people in auto insurance that that’s been one of the drivers of why auto insurance inflation is so high because it’s so much more expensive to repair a car today than it was 10 years ago.”

Biden’s new environmental rule will require that the majority of cars sold in the United States be EVs or hybrids by 2032.

As Breitbart’s John Binder reported:

The regulation comes even as a survey from Consumer Reports posted last year revealed that American consumers reported about 80 percent more problems with EVs than consumers with traditional gas-powered cars.

Most problems consumers face with EVs, the report suggests, are long charging times, a lack of charging stations in general, issues with the lithium-ion battery, outer and interior parts not fitting precisely, and engine failures.

Likewise, car dealers across the United States have warned the Biden administration for months that there is a general lack of interest in EVs among American consumers.

The rapid push towards EVs is especially concerning for America’s autoworkers who face the prospect of having their wages reduced and jobs eliminated as the more labor-intensive internal combustion engine is sunset in favor of EVs that require less parts and manpower to assemble. This EV transition will not only eliminate jobs on the assembly line, but also thousands of manufacturing jobs all along the supply chain for the components that comprise a gas-powered car. In fact, the most crucial part of an electric vehicle is the battery pack, and China holds a near monopoly on the raw materials necessary to build the lithium batteries used in most EVs.

Biden’s latest EV ruling follows former President Donald Trump’s dire warning about China’s efforts to destroy the U.S. auto industry in a “bloodbath” if the Biden administration allows the communist regime to bypass tariffs and flood the U.S. market with cheap EVs.

During a speech in Dayton, Ohio, last weekend, Trump said:

Let me tell you something to China, if you’re listening President Xi — and you and I are friends but he understands the way I deal — those big, monster car manufacturing plants that you’re building in Mexico right now, and you think you’re going to get that and you’re going to not hire Americans and you’re going to sell the cars to us, no.

We’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line. And you’re not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected. Now if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole, that’s going to be the least of it, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the country; that’s going to be the least of it.

Despite the media’s hysteria over Trump’s use of the term “bloodbath,” that very phrase was used in February by Chinese automaker He Xiaopeng, the CEO of XPeng Motors, who told his employees in a memo that they were engaged in “a fierce competition that may end in a ‘bloodbath.’”

Rebecca Mansour is a Senior Editor-at-Large for Breitbart News. Follow her on X at @RAMansour.