President Joe Biden signed an executive order Monday to phase out the federal government’s use of vehicles that run on gas and replace them with ones that run on electricity.
The process is part of Biden’s “Made in America” executive order, which the president claims will create one million additional jobs in the auto industry in America.
“The federal government also owns an enormous fleet of vehicles, which we’re going to replace with clean electric vehicles made right here in America, by American workers,” Biden told reporters during a briefing Monday announcing his “Buy American” executive order.
But replacing an entire federal fleet of hundreds of thousands of vehicles could be a massive undertaking. TechCrunch reported that, in 2019, the federal fleet comprised of more than 645,000 vehicles, including more than 412,000 trucks and 224,000 passenger cars.
That does not even begin to include the hundreds of thousands of U.S. Post Office vehicles powered by gas, the Verge reported.
Many existing federal vehicles on the road are tied to leases, which could halt the process of transferring them to electric.
There is also the issue of making sure electric vehicles have enough charging stations to provide them with enough power to function.
Automakers likely to supply the country with these electric vehicles include Ford and General Motors, companies that have both said they would commit to spending billions on electric vehicles.