President Joe Biden visited the Detroit Auto Show on Wednesday to promote electric vehicles, but he was heavily distracted from his mission by a gas-powered Corvette.
“Get out of the way, everybody. This thing flies,” Biden said as he approached the orange-painted vehicle.
Led by General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Biden examined the carbon fiber body and ceramic brakes of the latest model of the Corvette.
With Barra’s permission, Biden climbed into the driver’s seat and started the gas engine and sat quietly listening to the rumble of the engine before turning it off.
“I tell you what. Tell the head of my Secret Service detail, I’m driving home,” he said. “You want to come with me?”
Biden sat in the seat for a few more moments marveling at the vehicle.
“This is something else,” he said.
Biden also toured a Ford Mustang MACH-E electric vehicle, an electric F-150, and even got to drive an electric Cadillac Lyriq.
“It’s a beautiful car,” he said after driving the Lyriq a short distance. “But I love the Corvette.”
During his speech, Biden was back on script, promoting a future of electric vehicles fueled by heavy government subsidies for batteries and electric charging systems as well as tax credits for the purchase of electric vehicles.
But he warned that workers would soon have to retrain in order to build what he called “the electric vehicle revolution.”
“Just like they used to be building carburetors, you’re not going to be doing that much anymore with electric vehicles,” he said. “But we’re going to have to build an awful lot of vehicle batteries.”
Biden also boasted of billions of dollars of investments into 500,000 charging stations around the country to flip transportation to electric cars.
“The great American road trip is going to be electrified,” he boasted.
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