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      How the New E.P.A. Rules Affect Toyota and Their Hybrid Cars

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      The auto giant lobbied hard against tougher pollution rules. This week, the E.P.A.’s new rules proved favorable to hybrid technology, an area that Toyota dominates.The breakfast at Toyota’s annual dealership gathering in Las Vegas last fall was an exclusive, invite-only affair, where attendees were told to cover their cellphone cameras with red stickers.Speaking was Stephen Ciccone, Toyota’s top lobbyist. He said the industry was facing an existential crisis — not because of the economy or fuel prices, but because of stronger tailpipe pollution limits being proposed in the United States. The rules were “bad for the country, bad for the consumer, and bad for the auto industry,” he said, according to a memo he later circulated among Toyota dealerships that was reviewed by The New York Times.“For more than two years, Toyota and our dealer partners have stood alone in the fight against unrealistic BEV mandates,” he wrote, using the acronym for battery-electric vehicles. “We have taken a lot of hits from environmental activists, the media, and some politicians. But we have not — and we will not — back down.”On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized tailpipe emissions rules that require car makers to meet tough new average emissions limits. The rules are some of the most significant aimed at fighting climate change in United States history.But the rules relaxed major elements of an earlier, more stringent proposal. In particular, the final regulations were favorable to hybrid cars, those that run both on gasoline and electricity — giving a bigger role to a market that Toyota dominates.Toyota, it appeared, had come out on top.Once a leader in clean cars, Toyota has cemented its role as the voice of caution against electrifying the auto industry too quickly, using its lobbying and public relations muscle to oppose a rapid shift that experts say is critical to fighting climate change.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      VW Workers in Chattanooga Seek Vote to Join Union

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      The United Automobile Workers union said that 70 percent of the 4,000 eligible Volkswagen workers at a Chattanooga factory had signed cards expressing support.Volkswagen employees in Tennessee who are hoping to join the United Automobile Workers asked a federal agency on Monday to hold an election, a key step toward the union’s longtime goal of organizing nonunion factories across the South.With the union’s backing, Volkswagen workers filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board asking for a vote on U.A.W. representation, saying that more than 70 percent of the 4,000 eligible workers at the plant had signed cards supporting the union.“Today, we are one step closer to making a good job at Volkswagen into a great career,” Isaac Meadows, an assembly worker at the plant, said in a statement.If held, an election would be the first test of the U.A.W.’s newfound strength after staging a wave of strikes in the fall against the three Detroit automakers — General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis — and winning record wage increases.The U.A.W. has been hoping to use momentum from its bargaining with the Detroit-based manufacturers to organize nonunion plants in Southern states that pay significantly lower wages than union factories. The U.A.W. says it plans to spend $40 million over the next three years on its campaign.Chattanooga workers have voted on U.A.W. representation twice before, and slim majorities rejected unionization each time. In a 2014 vote, the union had no opposition from Volkswagen management, but there was vocal resistance from state Republican leaders, who suggested that unionizing would jeopardize expansion and job growth at the plant. A second narrow loss came in 2019.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Car Deals Are Easier to Find but Lenders Are Tightening Their Terms

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      It has become harder for some borrowers to get affordable car loans as banks and dealerships face a rising number of delinquencies.New cars are more available this spring, and manufacturers have even begun offering deals to entice buyers.But at the same time, lenders have been tightening the terms of car loans as they deal with a rising number of delinquencies. That has made it harder for some people to get affordable loans.Access to auto loans for both new and used cars was generally worse in January than in December and down year over year, according to Dealertrack, a Cox Automotive service that tracks credit availability based on factors like loan approvals, terms and down payments. The impact was seen at banks, credit unions and dealerships.“We are seeing credit access tighten in all channels,” said Sean Tucker, a senior editor at Kelley Blue Book, Cox’s car research and sales website.Subprime borrowers in particular — consumers with the lowest credit scores — may face challenges finding financing, Mr. Tucker said. The share of subprime new-car loans has fallen to about 6 percent, roughly half what it was before the pandemic.Borrowers with strong credit are especially attractive to lenders. The average credit score for new-car shoppers taking out a loan or lease rose to 743 at the end of 2023, up from 739 a year earlier, according to fourth-quarter data from Experian Automotive, which tracks car financing. For used cars, the average score was 684, up from 681. (Experian’s report uses VantageScore 3.0 scores, ranging from 300 to 850; scores of 661 and above generally are eligible for favorable terms.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tesla Halts Production in Germany After Suspected Arson Attack

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      Police believe the blaze at a high-voltage power pylon had been deliberately set, amid ongoing turmoil over the automaker’s plans to expand its assembly plant near Berlin.Tesla was forced to halt production at its assembly plant outside Berlin early Tuesday after someone set fire to a nearby high-voltage pylon, causing a blaze that cut off electricity to the factory and surrounding region, the police said.The Brandenburg police said they responded to the fire at a high-voltage power mast in a field near Tesla’s plant. The building was not damaged by the fire, but it caused the power to be cut at the plant and across the wider region, home to some 60,000 people.Tesla did not respond to requests for comment, but a spokeswoman for the U.S. automaker confirmed to German media that production had been halted and all employees evacuated. Some 12,500 people work at the plant, according to Tesla, but not all of them would have been present at the time the power went down.By early afternoon, residents reported said that power had been restored to some areas.Authorities said that investigators from the Brandenburg state Office of Criminal Investigation had started an inquiry, but urged against speculation about who might be behind the arson, even as social media exploded with accusations blaming environmental activists.Since last week, several dozen protesters have camped out in cabins and platforms built in the branches of trees in a forested area adjacent to the plant that Tesla would like to raze in order to build a rail yard, warehouses and educational facilities.Last month, 65 percent of eligible voters in Grünheide, the community that surrounds the factory, cast ballots opposing Tesla’s expansion plans. The vote was nonbinding, but local officials said they would honor it by heading back to the drawing board to try to find an acceptable solution.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Should Biden Bow Out, as David Axelrod Urged?

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      More from our inbox:Mike Johnson’s LamentSkip the Drive-Through, for the Sake of the Environment and Mental HealthThe Threat to New Orleans Drinking Water Jonathan Ernst/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “The Axe Is Sharp,” by Maureen Dowd (column, Nov. 19):While reading Ms. Dowd’s column on whether President Biden should run for a second term, I was struck by a historical parallel. Like Mr. Biden, President Lyndon B. Johnson had served a deeply charismatic president and used his extensive senatorial experience to seal that president’s vision with legislation.But facing health concerns and declining popularity because of the Vietnam War, as well as surprisingly strong opposition by Robert F. Kennedy, Johnson decided that his moment had passed.As David Axelrod has noted, it is time to consider allowing other Democratic leaders to step forward. Mr. Biden has served the nation honorably for longer than most Americans have been alive, guiding the country through dark times and leaving a clear legislative mark.For his swan song, he can try to hold on to power until he is 86. Or he can choose to guide the nation peacefully through the turbulence of the coming electoral storm — not from the campaign trail, but as a steady presence in the Oval Office. I can think of no higher service.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Why U.A.W. President Shawn Fain Has Taken a Hard Line

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      Shawn Fain owes his rise within the United Automobile Workers to a group determined to make the union far more confrontational toward automakers.When Shawn Fain sought the presidency of the United Automobile Workers union last year, he ran on a platform that promised: “No corruption. No concessions. No tiers.”That pledge encapsulated many members’ frustrations with years of union scandal and concessions to the three big Detroit automakers, including the creation of a lower tier of wages for newer employees. The platform helped propel Mr. Fain to the top job — where he has led a mounting wave of walkouts in recent weeks to demand more favorable contract terms.But the platform largely predated Mr. Fain’s candidacy. It was devised by a group called Unite All Workers for Democracy, which was officially formed in 2020 as a caucus — essentially, a political party within the union.The group set out to topple the ruling party, known as the Administration Caucus, which had run the union for more than 70 years. In 2022, Unite All Workers hashed out its party line, recruited candidates and ramped up a campaign operation to elect them.When the dust settled, the slate had won half the seats on the union’s 14-member executive board, with Mr. Fain, previously a union staff member, as president. Unite All Workers’ role helps explain why the union has taken such a hard line with the automakers.“We had a platform we ran on, and we’re trying to push that platform forward,” said Scott Houldieson, a founder of the group and a longtime Ford Motor worker in Chicago. “Shawn has been really upfront about what we’re trying to accomplish.”The first fruits of that approach may have emerged Wednesday, when negotiators for the union and Ford agreed on terms for a new four-year contract, including a wage increase of roughly 25 percent over the four years, according to the union.“We hit the companies to maximum effect,” Mr. Fain said in a Facebook livestream. The deal is subject to ratification by the company’s union workers.Since at least the 1980s, U.A.W. members have formed groups to challenge the union’s top officials, or at least prod them to be more confrontational with automakers. The efforts took on added urgency in 2007, when the union accepted tiers as a way to stabilize the automakers’ financial footing. (General Motors and Chrysler later filed for bankruptcy anyway; Ford avoided it.)Scott Houldieson, a founder of United Auto Workers for Democracy, said, “We had a platform we ran on, and we’re trying to push that platform forward.”Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesBut the Administration Caucus always held a trump card: The union leadership wasn’t elected directly by members. Rather, future leaders were effectively chosen by existing leaders, then approved by delegates to a convention every four years.That changed after a corruption scandal in which two recent U.A.W. presidents were charged with embezzlement in 2020. As part of a consent decree with the federal government, members voted in a referendum on whether to directly elect union leaders. Unite All Workers, which was pressing for the change, waged an all-out campaign to persuade union members to support “one member one vote.”When the initiative passed by nearly a two-to-one ratio, Unite All Workers, whose members paid an annual fee, was poised to become a kingmaker of sorts in the union’s 2022 elections. The group had a budget of over $100,000, two full-time staff members and hundreds of volunteer organizers.“It was obvious that we could use the same infrastructure” of staff and volunteers to compete in the election, said Mike Cannon, a retired U.A.W. member who serves on the Unite All Workers steering committee. “The only question at that point was, were we going to have any candidates?”Unite All Workers announced that anyone who wanted to join its campaign slate would have to fill out a detailed questionnaire and attend at least one meeting with its members.The group wanted to ensure that the candidates it backed were committed to running the union with extensive input from rank-and-file members, and to driving a much harder bargain with employers. It wanted an end to wage tiers, which it said divided and demoralized workers, and a focus on organizing new members, especially among electric vehicle and battery workers.Among those responding to the call was Mr. Fain, then a staff member in the union division responsible for Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram. During his interview process, Mr. Fain explained how, as a local official in Indiana in 2007, he had helped lead opposition to the two-tier wage structure the union had agreed to, and how he had argued for more favorable contract terms after joining the headquarters staff.Some members of the group were skeptical that an employee of the old guard could be a reformer. But other U.A.W. dissidents vouched for him. “I knew the claims were legit,” said Martha Grevatt, a longtime Chrysler employee on the steering committee of Unite All Workers.Martha Grevatt said she had found Mr. Fain’s pledges to shake up the union “legit” even though he had been a staff member under the previous leadership.Daniel Lozada for The New York TimesThe group backed Mr. Fain and six other candidates for the union’s 14-member executive board, and all seven won.As president, Mr. Fain has appointed critics of the former leadership as his top aides, including one who served on the Unite All Workers steering committee. Board members, including Mr. Fain, have attended some of the group’s monthly membership meetings and taken part in one of its WhatsApp chats.Many of the group’s priorities became demands in the union’s contract negotiations, and Mr. Fain has indicated that he hopes to use momentum from the strike to organize nonunion companies like Tesla and Honda, a key objective of Unite All Workers.But for all the connections between the group and the union leadership, they are not one and the same.Some board members who ran on the Unite All Workers slate have at times taken positions in tension with the group’s priorities. In recent weeks, Margaret Mock, the union’s second-ranking official, has expressed concern to fellow board members about the walkout’s cost to the union’s budget. At a special board meeting last week, she offered a proposal intended to scale back spending on organizing during the strike, according to two people familiar with the meeting. The board set aside the proposal; Ms. Mock did not respond to a request for comment.For its part, Unite All Workers considers itself accountable to rank-and-file members, not an extension of the leaders it helped elect. On a tentative deal with any of the three large automakers, Unite All Workers plans to appoint a task force to provide an assessment of the proposal to the union’s members. The group’s members will then decide whether to support it.“I would say it’s not automatic that the caucus endorses” an agreement, said Andrew Bergman, who serves on the Unite All Workers steering committee.Still, as a practical matter, the group is highly unlikely to oppose an agreement, since Mr. Fain has forcefully pressed for its core priorities.“For years, we’ve been playing defense at every step, and we’ve been losing,” Mr. Fain said in a video streamed online on Friday, explaining why the strike would continue. “When we vote on a tentative agreement, it will be because your leadership and your council thinks we’ve gotten absolutely every dollar we can.” This week, the union expanded the strike to the largest U.S. factories at Stellantis and General Motors.The approach has raised concerns among employers and business groups. John Drake, a vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that the Detroit automakers could struggle to remain competitive after the strike, and that Mr. Fain appeared to be overreaching in extracting concessions.“It feels like there’s not really a strategy here,” Mr. Drake said. “It’s like pain is the goal.”Mr. Fain has indicated that he hopes to use momentum from the strike to organize nonunion companies like Tesla and Honda, a key objective of the insurgent group that endorsed his candidacy.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe best analogy for Unite All Workers may be to a group called Brand New Congress, created by supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, the progressive Vermont independent, to help elect congressional candidates beginning in 2018.Not long after the 2016 presidential election, Brand New Congress urged an obscure New York bartender and activist named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to challenge a longtime incumbent in a Democratic congressional primary. A sister group provided her with training and campaign infrastructure. After she won, two people involved with the groups joined her staff.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has since become far more prominent than those early backers, and in principle she could take positions at odds with their progressive stands. But in practice, it’s unlikely. The worldview is embedded in her political identity.Mr. Fain’s story is similar: a once-obscure progressive who was catapulted to a position of power by a group of insurgents and was determined to enact their shared principles once he got there. Except that, in backing him and his colleagues, Unite All Workers helped win not just a few legislative seats, but the reins of an entire union.After Vail Kohnert-Yount, a Unite All Workers steering committee member, seconded Mr. Fain’s nomination for president at the union’s convention last year, he spoke to her about relying on government assistance as a new parent decades ago.“I remember thinking this guy has not forgotten where he came from — he’s very much stayed that person,” Ms. Kohnert-Yount said. “We did our best to endorse a candidate we believed in.” More

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      U.A.W. Will Not Expand Strikes at G.M., Ford and Stellantis as Talks Progress

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      The United Automobile Workers reported improved wage offers from the automakers and a concession from General Motors on workers at battery factories.The United Automobile Workers union said on Friday that it had made progress in its negotiations with Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler, and would not expand the strikes against the companies that began three weeks ago.In an online video, the president of the union, Shawn Fain, said all three companies had significantly improved their offers to the union, including providing bigger raises and offering cost-of-living increases. In what he described as a major breakthrough, Mr. Fain said G.M. was now willing to include workers at its battery factories in the company’s national contract with the U.A.W.G.M. had previously said that it could not include those workers because they are employed by joint ventures between G.M. and battery suppliers.“Here’s the bottom line: We are winning,” said Mr. Fain, wearing a T-shirt that read, “Eat the Rich.” “We are making progress, and we are headed in the right direction.”Mr. Fain said G.M. made the concession on battery plant workers after the union had threatened to strike the company’s factory in Arlington, Texas, where it makes some of its most profitable full-size sport-utility vehicles, including the Cadillac Escalade and the Chevrolet Tahoe. The plant employs 5,300 workers.G.M. has started production at one battery plant in Ohio, and has others under construction in Tennessee and Michigan. Workers at the Ohio plant voted overwhelmingly to be represented by the U.A.W. and have been negotiating a separate contract with the joint venture, Ultium Cells, that G.M. owns with L.G. Energy Solution.Ford is building two joint-venture battery plants in Kentucky and one in Tennessee, and a fourth in Michigan that is wholly owned by Ford. Stellantis has just started building a battery plant in Indiana and is looking for a site for a second.G.M. declined to comment about battery plant workers. “Negotiations remain ongoing, and we will continue to work towards finding solutions to address outstanding issues,” the company said in a statement. “Our goal remains to reach an agreement that rewards our employees and allows G.M. to be successful into the future”Shares of the three companies jumped after Mr. Fain spoke. G.M.’s stock closed up about 2 percent, Stellantis about 3 percent and Ford about 1 percent.The strike began Sept. 15 when workers walked out of three plants in Michigan, Ohio and Missouri, each owned by one of the three companies.The stoppage was later expanded to 38 spare-parts distribution centers owned by G.M. and Stellantis, and then to a Ford plant in Chicago and another G.M. factory in Lansing, Mich. About 25,000 of the 150,000 U.A.W. members employed by the three Michigan automakers were on strike as of Friday morning.“I think this strategy of targeted strikes is working,” said Peter Berg, a professor of employment relations at Michigan State University. “It has the effect of slowly ratcheting up the cost to the companies, and they don’t know necessarily where he’s going to strike next.”Here Are the Locations Where U.A.W. Strikes Are HappeningSee where U.A.W. members are on strike at plants and distribution centers owned by Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.The contract battle has become a national political issue. President Biden visited a picket line near Detroit last month. A day later, former President Donald J. Trump spoke at a nonunion factory north of Detroit and criticized Mr. Biden and leaders of the U.A.W. Other lawmakers and candidates have voiced support for the U.A.W. or criticized the strikes.When negotiations began in July, Mr. Fain initially demanded a 40 percent increase in wages, noting that workers’ pay has not kept up with inflation over the last 15 years and that the chief executives of the three companies have seen pay increases of roughly that magnitude.The automakers, which have made near-record profits over the last 10 years, have all offered increases of slightly more than 20 percent over four years. Company executives have said anything more would threaten their ability to compete with nonunion companies like Tesla and invest in new electric vehicle models and battery factories.The union also wants to end a wage system in which newly hired workers earn just over half the top U.A.W. wage, $32 an hour now, and need to work for eight years to reach the maximum. It is also seeking cost-of-living adjustments if inflation flares, pensions for a greater number of workers, company-paid retirement health care, shorter working hours and the right to strike in response to plant closings.In separate statements, Ford and Stellantis have said they agreed to provide cost-of-living increases, shorten the time it takes for employees to reach the top wage, and several other measures the union has sought.Ford also said it was “open to the possibility of working with the U.A.W. on future battery plants in the U.S.” Its battery plants are still under construction and have not hired any production workers yet.The union is concerned that some of its members will lose their jobs, especially people who work at engine and transmission plants, as the automakers produce more electric cars and trucks. Those vehicles do not need those parts, relying instead on electric motors and batteries.Stellantis’ chief operating officer for North America, Mark Stewart, said the company and the union were “making progress, but there are gaps that still need to be closed.”The union is also pushing the companies to convert temporary workers who now make a top wage of $20 an hour into full-time staff.Striking at only select locations at all three companies is a change from the past, when the U.A.W. typically called for a strike at all locations of one company that the union had chosen as its target. Striking at only a few locations hurts the companies — the idled plants make some of their most profitable models — but limits the economic damage to the broader economies in the affected states.It also could help preserve the union’s $825 million strike fund, from which striking workers are paid while they’re off the job. The union is paying striking workers $500 a week.G.M. said this week that the first two weeks of the strike had cost it $200 million. The three automakers and some of their suppliers have said that they have had to lay off hundreds of workers because the strikes have disrupted the supply and demand for certain parts.Santul Nerkar More

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      Why Trump and the Rest of the G.O.P. Won’t Stop Bashing Electric Vehicles

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      Fresh off a walking tour of blighted Flint, Mich., on Wednesday, Vivek Ramaswamy spoke excitedly about a comeback for the “forgotten America” that he has made a part of his long-shot bid for the presidency.He wasn’t promising that the automakers that had largely abandoned Flint would return. “We have opportunities, though, to look to the future of a lot that we need to bring to this country,” Mr. Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old entrepreneur, said, ticking through the industries that he’d like to see help drive a revival: semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, defense production.The industry he doesn’t want involved is the one already pouring money into the state: electric vehicles. He attributes the investments and the rising popularity of the cars to tax credits and favorable regulations that he would reverse as president.“That’s not only a market distortion, but a market distortion that is decidedly a step in an anti-American direction that I think is frankly dangerous to the future of the country,” he told reporters just outside Flint.Mr. Ramaswamy’s enmity toward electric cars, extolled in the ancestral home of the American automobile, does not exactly set him apart in the presidential field. The front-runner for the Republican nomination, Donald J. Trump, was in Michigan last week, reeling off a rambling bill of particulars against E.V.s, complaining falsely that they run out of power in 15 minutes, are bad for the environment, and would destroy the domestic auto industry within a few short years.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a distant second to Mr. Trump in national polls, recently railed against electric vehicles when he unveiled an energy policy platform that promised to roll back E.V. subsidies to “support Americans’ right to drive the cars they want.” Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s former vice president-turned-competitor, agrees with Mr. Ramaswamy and others that the transition to electric vehicles would send American auto manufacturing to China.Opposing electric cars — and the industry’s ongoing shift away from internal-combustion engines to battery power — allows Republican candidates to criticize China, the dominant economic force in the battery industry. It also pleases G.O.P. voters still hostile to the notion of climate change — what Mr. Ramaswamy disparaged Wednesday night as “that God-forsaken religion, the climate cult” and “the E.V. subsidy cult” — and to all things environmental and “woke.” And it evokes a nostalgic halcyon past, the same one that Mr. Trump conjured when he promised in 2016 to bring back coal mines, steel mills and basic manufacturing.But the steel mills and coal mines failed to roar back to their glory days, and the internal-combustion engine is unlikely to as well. In fact, the electric vehicle transition is well underway.That transition is driven in part by President Biden’s policies, which subsidize the manufacturing and purchasing of E.V.s and their components and impose strict fuel economy standards on automakers that can be met with zero-emission electric cars. But it’s also motivated by Detroit executives who have vowed to convert their corporations to all electric, by consumers reacting to environmental concerns and gas prices, and by aggressive policies from governments like those of California, Britain and Europe that are beyond the reach of a Republican White House.Those forces have prompted hundreds of billions of dollars to pour into states like Michigan and Ohio, but also to Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee, to assemble electric vehicles and build batteries and other parts with the warm embrace of Republican governors.“The free market and consumer demand should drive the automobile manufacturing industry like it has here in Georgia, creating thousands of high-paying E.V. jobs across our state because of Georgia’s first-class business environment, unmatched work force and strong logistics network,” Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, said in a statement this week. “The path to America leading industrial innovation in the 21st century is through Republican-led states.”But Republican presidential candidates say that, if elected, they will eliminate Mr. Biden’s tax incentives to build and buy electric cars and trucks, and roll back his fuel efficiency standards aimed at sharply reducing climate-warming greenhouse gases.“I support letting people choose the cars that they want without those perverse incentives and the tax code that suggests that buying an electric vehicle is somehow in the owner’s best interest,” Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said, though such incentives have helped prompt BMW, Volvo and Mercedes-Benz to expand E.V. operations in his state.The Republican Party’s attacks on E.V.s. stem in part from real concerns shared by the auto industry and foreign policymakers. China does dominate battery-making, and as lithium-ion battery imports soar — they were up 99 percent last year from 2021 — a weakening Chinese domestic economy is bolstered abroad.In Green Charter Township, Mich., where Gotion, a Chinese subsidiary, plans to build a battery plant, Mr. Ramaswamy showed up Wednesday evening at a horse farm dotted with signs reading “No Go on Gotion.” Alongside promises to “make sure that God-forsaken plant never gets built,” he criticized the “electric vehicle subsidy cult,” which, he said to cheers, “will end on my watch as your next president.”“If you want to buy an E.V., I’m fine with that — we don’t need to use our taxpayer dollars to subsidize it,” Mr. Ramaswamy said, declaring that subsidies involve “subsidizing the C.C.P. because those E.V.s require batteries made in China — now made by China across the street from here,” a reference to the Chinese Communist Party.And some attendees agreed.“I don’t have a problem with electric vehicles — if you want one, OK, cool, buy one. But don’t force me, because I got a Dodge Ram with a Hemi and I love it,” Randy Guppy, from Howard City, Mich., said, referring to a type of V-8 engine.John Bozzella, president of the auto industry’s Alliance for Automotive Innovation, also fretted that the Biden administration’s aggressive push for electrification was driving the auto industry faster than suppliers could ramp up battery production, strengthening China’s hand — and possibly opening the domestic market to cheap Chinese electric cars.And electric vehicles do take fewer workers to assemble than internal-combustion vehicles, driving labor unrest and Democratic political worries.But the notion that electric vehicles are economically out of reach, technically infeasible and will somehow cripple domestic auto production and shift manufacturing to China appears belied by what is actually happening. This spring, fully electric vehicle sales reached 7.2 percent of all car and light-truck sales, a 48.4 percent increase over the year before and on a trajectory that analysts believe will only accelerate, according to Cox Automotive. U.S. consumers chose from 103 different models of cars, pickup trucks, S.U.V.s and vans.The automotive industry said the average cost of an E.V. fell this year by $10,700, to $54,300 — $5,800 more than the overall average cost of cars and light trucks in the country.Some 77 percent of all E.V.s sold in the United States were produced in North America — almost 60 percent from Tesla, owned by Republican-friendly Elon Musk. The rest were from Japan, Europe and South Korea. More than 660,000 electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids were sold in the United States in the first half of this year, by the industry’s count; only a few thousand were from China, and that number actually declined, according to automotive analysts.Money is pouring in. Around $115 billion has been pledged to build vehicles, batteries and components in the United States, much of that in Michigan and the Southeast. Georgia, a key swing state in 2024, has seen $25.1 billion in pledged investment alone, said Garrison Douglas, a spokesman for Governor Kemp.The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment in the industry will rise by more than 8.3 million by 2031, and while employment for basic assembly-line workers will decline by 96,000, higher wage jobs in engineering, software development and electronic assembly will shoot upward.Earlier this year, Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, a Republican, blocked Ford from considering his state for a new battery factory, saying he was worried that the automaker was being used “as a front for China,” which would have controlled much of the plant’s technology. Ford then moved its $3.5 billion investment to Marshall, Mich.Stacey LaRouche, a spokeswoman for Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s Democratic governor, talked up such investment on Wednesday, as Toyota and LG Energy Systems were announcing a $3 billion expansion of LG’s battery plant in Holland, Mich., to power Toyota E.V.s built in Kentucky.Electric vehicle and battery deals, she said, “are creating thousands of good paying jobs right here in Michigan, not overseas.” More