The Biden administration’s effort to have electric vehicles account for two-thirds of all new cars sold within less than a decade likely won’t reach its goal, but that won’t matter for investors who play their cards right.
Shares of Tesla, the electric-vehicle leader, and stock of EV followers Ford Motor and General Motors can continue to power ahead regardless. And there are other ways to play the EV trend no matter where EVs’ share of the market winds up in 2032.
The effort, which marks the third element in a push by President Joe Biden, is nothing if not aggressive, but it is likely to run into trouble in terms of its sheer costs. Consumers’ tastes and the need for charging infrastructure are additional challenges.
In August 2021, Biden got the U.S. car industry to agree that lifting EVs’ share of new-car sales to 50% by 2030 was doable. A year later, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which included tax credits for people who buy EVs. The latest move came Wednesday, when the Environmental Protection Agency proposed strict emission standards for the 2027 to 2032 vehicle model years.
Car companies will have to sell far more zero-emission vehicles to comply.
The auto industry’s initial reaction runs along the lines of “Hey, what gives?” Car makers seeking to meet the 50% goal are already investing hundreds of billions of dollars in developing EVs and building capacity to crank out batteries and assemble the cars.
That is the first hurdle to the EPA/Biden EV plan. Auto makers’ capital is limited, while a new assembly plant, tooling, and a battery facility with capacity to make roughly 500,000 EVs a year costs roughly $8 billion. It also takes a couple of years to complete that infrastructure and ramp up output.
Hitting Biden’s 50% EV goal requires roughly $120 billion in capital spending dedicated to EVs. The 67% goal calls for about $160 billion.
The extra $40 billion might not seem like a stretch, but the auto industry doesn’t exactly print money. The entire industry, outside of China, generates about $200 billion in cash from operations in a good year. It spends roughly half that on new plants and equipment.
The $100 billion includes markets outside of the U.S., and most of the money goes to support car companies’ existing businesses. If auto makers don’t renew their products, they can suddenly find themselves with no cash flow to fund capital projects.
Investors might assume that capital for new lithium or copper capacity could be a hurdle too, but that isn’t really the case. Lithium demand, and production, would need to increase roughly sixfold instead of fivefold over the coming decade to meet a more aggressive adoption goal.
That would cost only another $5 billion to $8 billion in capital—significant money but not a staggering amount. The mining industry is a lot smaller than the auto industry and the material is available to be dug up.
Investors might also assume that regulations are what determine EV adoption rates, but the historical record points in another direction. While EVs were on sale before Tesla, no one really cared. The Model 3 brought popular EVs to the masses, with sales of about 3.5 million Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, built on the same platform, over the life of the program.
It took Tesla about five years to do that, from mid-2017 to early 2023. Between 2010 and 2020, Nissan (7201. Japan) sold about 500,000 Leaf EVs around the globe, meaning that Tesla sold 7.5 times the vehicles in half the time.
The point is that consumer buy what they like. EVs will only represent 50% or 67% of new car sales if they are better cars.
Things are trending in that direction, but there is some distance to go. Today, EVs cost a little more up front, but they are cheaper to maintain and power. Batteries are getting cheaper; a decline of roughly 40% from today’s levels would mean EVs cost the same as internal-combustion cars.
“Cheap batteries are important, but adequate recharging infrastructure is probably a more important issue in terms of adoption,” said Nicholas Colas, a co-founder of DataTrek Research and former auto analyst.
Charging is the third hurdle. According to Colas, the average American drives about twice as much as the average European, so the U.S. will need more EV chargers that Western Europe.
Investors shouldn’t get too wound up about the 67% goal. “The more relevant thing is what do [EPA rules] do to the rate of change,” said Baird auto analyst Luke Junk.
Junk says a faster shift toward EVs is possible, which would be a good thing for parts suppliers that support the EV transition. Aptiv (APTV), TE Connectivity (TEL) and BorgWarner (BWA), he said, are suppliers that will do fine at a slower EV adoption pace and better if adoptions accelerates. He rates shares of all three at Buy.
Junk also raised some potential unintended consequences of the EPA goal.
For one, more investment to make more EVs faster will leave less capital available for developing self-driving cars. That is a negative for commuters who want to text and drive.
There is a positive too. More EVs in the U.S. would mean the U.S. moves closer to European regulations. Uniformity in both markets would save the industry some money.
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