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      ‘A fight against corporate greed’: Bernie Sanders rallies with UAW in Detroit

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      US car workers striking against the nation’s three biggest automakers “are waging … a fight against the outrageous level of corporate greed” seen across the country, Bernie Sanders said on Friday.The liberal US senator’s remarks came on Friday afternoon during a rally with the United Auto Workers in Detroit, Michigan, kicking off the first day of the union’s “Stand Up” strikes against General Motors, Stellantis and Ford.During his speech at the rally, Sanders told the crowd: “The fight that you are waging here is not only about decent wages, decent benefits and decent working conditions in the automobile industry. No. The fight you are waging is a fight against the outrageous level of corporate greed and arrogance that we are seeing on the part of CEOs who think they have a right to have it all and could [not] care less about the needs of their workers.”He continued: “The fight you are waging is to rebuild the struggling middle class of our country that was once the envy of the world.”Sanders also asserted that the CEOs and stockholders of the US’s biggest carmakers “make out like bandits”.“We refuse to live in an oligarchy,” Sanders said. “We refuse to accept a society in which so few have so much and so many have so little.”Among those who watched the Vermont senator’s speech was Chris Sanders, a worker at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, for 10 years. Sanders, 54, told the Guardian that significant media attention and focus on the economic effects of the strike on businesses and consumers misses the point.“The question that should be asked is what has 20 years of not paying our fair share cost the economy?” he said. “If we learned [anything] from the Covid-19 pandemic, we learned that putting money in the hands of real people is what keeps the economy going, because what creates jobs are not billionaires.“What creates jobs is having money in the hands of real people spending it or saving it, because they are spending it on products that create demand.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionChris Sanders noted the Ford plant had been holding job fairs and had trouble hiring because the starting wages of about $16 an hour no longer compete with other jobs. “No one ever has a problem with the executives getting paid $21m to $27m, and hourly labor and benefits is less than 5% of the total cost of a vehicle,” he said. “They just always want to put it to the greedy autoworker and I’m so damn tired of it.”Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, it secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, and lieutenant governor, Garlin Gilchrist II, gave introductory speeches at the rally before the UAW president, Shawn Fain, brought on Sanders, who is an independent but caucuses with Democrats.“It’s time to pick a side,” Fain said while introducing Sanders. “Either you’re with the billionaire class or you’re with the working class.” More

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      UAW strike: Joe Biden calls for resolution but understands workers’ frustrations – video

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      The US president said on Friday that no one wanted the United Auto Workers’ union to strike in its labour dispute with the big three US carmakers – but workers should get a share of the profits those companies are making.

      Biden told reporters at the White House that he understood the workers’ frustration, adding: ‘Record corporate profits … should be shared by record contracts for the UAW’ More

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      in Elections

      ‘We’re not asking to be millionaires’: workers strike at US car giants – video

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      Car workers have launched a series of strikes after their union failed to reach agreement on a new contract with the three largest US vehicle manufacturers, kicking off the country’s most ambitious industrial action in decades.
      The deadline for talks between the United Auto Workers union (UAW) and the car manufacturers Ford, General Motors and Stellantis expired at midnight on Thursday, with the sides still far from agreement on UAW’s contract priorities More

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      Auto workers strike after contract talks with US car giants fail

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      Auto workers have launched a series of strikes after their union failed to reach agreement with the US’s three largest manufacturers over a new contract, kicking off the most ambitious industrial labor action in decades.The deadline for talks between Ford, General Motors, Stellantis and the United Auto Workers (UAW) expired at midnight on Thursday, with the sides still far apart on the union’s new contract priorities.The strike – which marks the first time all three of the Detroit Three carmakers have been targeted by strikes at the same time – is being coordinated by UAW president Shawn Fain. He said he intended to launch a series of limited and targeted “standup” strikes to shut individual auto plants around the US.The strikes kicked off at midnight at a General Motors plant in Wentzville, Missouri, a Stellantis plant in Toledo, Ohio, and a Ford assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan.They involve a combined 12,700 workers at the plants, which are critical to the production of some of the Detroit Three’s most profitable vehicles including the Ford Bronco, Jeep Wrangler and Chevrolet Colorado pickup truck.“This is our defining moment,” said Fain during a livestream on Thursday night, less than two hours before the strike was set to begin.Fain said he would join the picket line at the Wayne plant when the action began at midnight and did not rule out broadening the strikes beyond the initial three targets. “If we need to go all out, we will.”The UAW has a $825m strike fund that is set to compensate workers $500 a week while out on strike and could support all of its members for about three months. Staggering the strikes rather than having all 150,000 members walk out at once will allow the union to stretch those resources.A limited strike could also reduce the potential economic damage economists and politicians fear would result from a widespread, lengthy shutdown of Detroit Three operations.Stellantis has more than 90 days worth of Jeeps in stock, and has been building SUVs and trucks on overtime, according to Cox Automotive data.But a week-long shutdown at Stellantis’ Jeep plant in Toledo could cut revenue by more than $380 million, based on data from the company’s financial reports.“If the negotiations don’t go in a direction that Fain thinks is positive, we can fully expect a larger strike coming in a week or two,” said Sam Fiorani, a production forecaster at Auto Forecast Solutions.He estimated the limited action would stop production of about 24,000 vehicles a week.Among the union’s demands are a 40% pay increase, an end to tiers, where some workers are paid at lower wage scales than others, and the restoration of concessions from previous contracts such as medical benefits for retirees, more paid time off and rights for workers affected by plant closures.Workers have cited past concessions and the big three’s immense profits in arguing in favor of their demands. The automakers’ profits jumped 92% from 2013 to 2022, totaling $250bn. During this same time period, chief executive pay increased 40%, and nearly $66bn was paid out in stock dividends or stock buybacks to shareholders.The industry is also set to receive record taxpayer incentives for transitioning to electric vehicles.Despite these financial performances, hourly wages for workers have fallen 19.3%, with inflation taken into account, since 2008.The Biden administration is reportedly considering emergency aid for smaller supply firms to the automaker manufacturers due to the strike, and president Biden spoke to Fain on the status of negotiations on Thursday.Ford said in a statement the UAW’s latest proposals would double its US labor costs. A walkout could mean that UAW profit-sharing checks for this year will be “decimated,” the company said.GM and Stellantis declined to comment ahead of the midnight strike deadline.However in an earlier video GM’s top manufacturing executive Gerald Johnson said that the UAW’s wage and benefits proposals would cost the automaker $100 billion, “more than twice the value of all of General Motors and absolutely impossible to absorb.” He did not detail how the union proposals would result in that cost, or over what time frame.And in an appearance on CNBC on Thursday evening, Ford CEO Jim Farley also criticized the union, claiming, “there’s no way we can be sustainable as a company,” if they met the union’s wage demands.GM CEO Mary Barra also said in a letter to employees about the status of negotiations and the company’s latest offer to the union, “Remember: we had a strike in 2019 and nobody won.”The contract fight has garnered significant support from the public and US labor movement. Drivers represented by the Teamsters have pledged not to cross the picket line, halting deliveries of vehicles from the automakers throughout the strike. Several labor unions, environmental, racial and social justice groups have publicly announced support for the UAW in their fight for new contracts. More

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      The United Auto Workers may soon strike. Every American should support them | Bernie Sanders

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      In the United States today, at a time of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower than they were 50 years ago after adjusting for inflation. In other words, despite a massive increase in worker productivity, despite CEOs now making nearly 400 times more than what their employees earn, despite record-breaking corporate profits, dividends and stock buybacks, average American workers are worse off than they were 50 years ago.That morally grotesque and growing inequality is exactly what has been occurring in the automobile industry for decades. This time, however, under new union leadership, the members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) are fighting back. If the big three automakers (General Motors, Ford and Stellantis) do not provide reasonable contracts to address longstanding inequities in the industry, there will be a strike – and all of us should support the strikers.The UAW members will be fighting not only for themselves but against a corporate culture of arrogance, cruelty and selfishness causing massive and unnecessary pain for the majority of working families throughout the country. Their fight against corporate greed is our fight. Their victory will resonate all across the economy, impact millions of workers from coast to coast and help create a more just and equitable economy.What are some of the issues that are pushing UAW members to strike? At the top of the list is the extraordinary level of corporate greed shown by industry leaders.In the first half of 2023 the big three automakers made a combined $21bn in profits – up 80% from the same time period last year. Over the past decade, these same companies made some $250bn in profits in North America alone.Yet last year, the big three spent $9bn – not to improve the lives of their workers, not to make their factories safer, but on stock buybacks and dividends to make their wealthy executives and stockholders even richer.Further, while many of their workers are struggling to survive financially, last year the CEO of General Motors raked in about $29m in total compensation, the CEO of Ford approximately $21m and the CEO of Stellantis over $25m.Incredibly, over the last four years, CEO pay at the big three has increased by more than 40%.While auto industry CEOs and stockholders make out like bandits, the workers who build the vehicles earn totally inadequate wages and, over the last several decades, have fallen further and further behind. There was once a time when a union job in the automobile industry was the gold standard for the working class of this country. Those days are long gone.The average starting wage at the big three today is around $17 an hour – less than a number of non-union auto plants around the country. The top wage is $32.32 an hour. Unbelievably, over the last 20 years, the average wage for American autoworkers has decreased by 30% after adjusting for inflation. The reality is that autoworkers at the big three are earning less today than they did 15 years ago.What the UAW is fighting for is not radical. It is the totally reasonable demand that autoworkers, who have made enormous financial sacrifices over the past 40 years, finally receive a fair share of the record-breaking profits their labor has generated.What does that mean? It means that if the big three can afford to give a pay raise of more than 40% to their CEOs, they should be able to provide the same type of pay raise for the autoworkers who make their products.And let’s be clear. While decent wages are a key demand for the UAW, there are other important contract changes that the union has proposed.The union, quite appropriately, wants to get rid of the two-tier system under which newer workers earn lower wages and receive less generous benefits than others doing the same exact work. They want to end the use of “temporary workers” who are ruthlessly exploited and treated like second-class citizens.They want to make sure that all autoworkers receive a decent pension plan and retiree health benefits so that they can retire with the respect and the dignity they deserve.They want to make sure that autoworkers have the right to strike when the big three announce that they will be shutting down a plant. Over the past 20 years, the big three have shut down 65 factories and shipped tens of thousands of jobs overseas where they can pay workers starvation wages with no benefits.The union also wants to make sure, as the industry proposes to build 10 new electric vehicle battery plants, that the workers in these plants become part of the UAW and receive the same wages and benefits as union members.As we transition away from fossil fuels and move toward electric vehicles in the fight to combat the climate crisis, the UAW wants to make sure that the green jobs of the future are well-paying, union jobs.The CEOs of the big three and their masters on Wall Street must understand they cannot have it all. Decade after decade their greed has decimated the middle class, hollowed out communities throughout our country and caused massive economic suffering for the working class of America. These CEOs have created a destructive race to the bottom in a global quest for cheap labor and lax environmental standards.Enough is enough! Let us stand together to put an end to corporate greed and start rebuilding our struggling middle class. Let us stand in solidarity with the UAW and create an economy that works for all, not just the privileged few.
      Bernie Sanders is a US senator and chairman of the health, education, labor and pensions committee More

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      In America’s ‘Voltage Valley’, hopes of car-making revival turn sour

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      When Lordstown Motors, an electric vehicles (EV) manufacturer in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley, declared bankruptcy last month, it was the latest blow to a region that has seen decades of extravagant promises fail to deliver.The 5,000 new jobs executives vowed to create in 2020 generated fresh hope for the shuttered General Motors Lordstown plant, which once functioned as an economic engine for the area and a critical piece of the nation’s industrial heartland.Local leaders rebranded Mahoning Valley “Voltage Valley”, claiming the EV revolution would revive the region’s fortunes. Donald Trump, then the president, trumpeted a major victory. “The area was devastated when General Motors moved out,” he said. “It’s incredible what’s happened in the area. It’s booming now. It’s absolutely booming.”But Lordstown Motors’ failure and its decision to sue its major investor, the electronics giant Foxconn, over a soured investment partnership, have dented Voltage Valley’s fortunes. Years of similar failures have given some residents here “savior fatigue” and have largely given up hope that the Lordstown plant can ever be fully rebooted.“I really want the plant to do well and succeed, but we’ve experienced so many ‘Hey we’re gonna come in and save the day’ promises that never happen,” said David Green, the regional director of United Auto Workers (UAW), who started working at Lordstown in 1995.Green said he was especially skeptical of Foxconn. The company has put up nets to prevent workers fromkilling themselves at one of its Chinese plants, he said, and has failed to live up to other promises of job creation across the US: “This is the savior company? I don’t have warm feelings toward them.”Still, some local leaders are optimistic. They insist Foxconn, which is attempting to scale up autonomous tractor production at Lordstown and lure a different EV startup, will save the plant.“I think Foxconn will be successful,” said Lordstown’s mayor, Arno Hill. “They are fairly confident they are going to be here for a while.”Hill and other leaders said Lordstown Motors was not the only new employer in town. GM partnered with LG Corporation to build an EV battery plant that employs about 1,300 people next door to Lordstown, and a new TJX warehouse has hired about 1,000 workers. A new industrial park is planned in the region, as are two gas plants.The feelings of those not in the business of promoting the region are more nuanced. In nearby Warren, where many Lordstown employees have lived since GM originally opened the plant in 1966 opening, mentions of Foxconn saving Lordstown or the Mahoning Valley drew a mix of eye-rolls, scoffs and blank looks from residents in the city’s downtown.“There are words, but I have seen no action,” said Leslie Dunlap, owner of the FattyCakes Soap Company, and several other Warren businesses, as she worked at a farmers’ market. “People here have lost faith in big companies.”Warren’s fortune is tied to that of the plant – when the latter’s employment numbers dipped, “people stopped spending money here, started selling houses, walking away from properties,” Dunlap said.Residents on a recent Tuesday afternoon said they were “cautiously optimistic” about the region’s economic future. Warren’s downtown shopfronts are full. But the city also bears the scars of rust belt decline with vacant industrial buildings and blighted neighborhoods.A few miles down the road at Lordstown, the lots around the well-kept offices where a few hundred Foxconn employees work are repaved. But the rest of the 6.2m sq ft factory looks like a depressing relic. Weeds sprout from the cracked pavement of the vast, unused blacktop lots surrounding it.Lordstown employed 11,000 people at its peak, but between the mid-1990s and 2016, the workforce in Trumbull county, where Lordstown sits, dropped by 63%. Just a few thousand remained when Lordstown closed in 2018.Some still hold a shred of hope that GM will repurchase the plant – it is nextdoor to an EV battery factory, and batteries are expensive to ship. It makes sense, said Josh Ayers, the bargaining chairman for UAW 1112.“I have a pit in my stomach every time I drive past Lordstown,” he said. “Foxconn is in there but I don’t see a future for them.”Regardless of the plant’s potential, local labor leaders say they have largely moved on and trained their attention on GM’s nearby Ultium electric-vehicle plant. A small explosion, fires and chemical leaks at the plant recently injured employees who work there, for as little as $16 per hour – less than the amount the local Waffle House offers, and low enough that some employees need government assistance, Ayers noted.Some local leaders tout the region’s job openings. Ayers said they exist because turnover is high. “People used to run through walls to work at Lordstown,” he said. “Nobody is running through walls to work at Ultium.”It is not the first time that a politician’s promises have left locals disappointed.‘This plant is about to shift into high gear’As the Great Recession battered the nation in late 2009, Barack Obama traveled to General Motors’ mammoth Lordstown plant to promise laid-off autoworkers a brighter future.Obama’s 2009 GM bailout became a lifeline: ramping up production of the Chevrolet Cobalt would bring back over 1,000 workers, the president told the anxious crowd.“Because of the steps we have taken, this plant is about to shift into high gear,” Obama bellowed over loud cheers. The plan soon fizzled, however, and by 2019 GM had shed the plant’s workforce and sold it to Lordstown Motors.In 2014 Obama declared Youngstown the center for 3D-printing technology, though the industry has brought few jobs. The failure to revive the area, in part, helped Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016.Mahoning Valley was once steel country, and residents here trace their economic troubles back to 1977’s Black Monday, when two steel plants abruptly closed and 5,000 workers lost their jobs. Since then, the promises to pull the region out of its slow tailspin have been plentiful.An eccentric businessman from nearby Youngstown briefly revived the Avanti car company until slow sales and poor management killed it by 1990, leaving its workforce jobless.A glass company that recently received tax incentives to build a large plant “never made one fuckin’ bottle”, UAW’s Green said.Perhaps most infamously, Trump, in a July 2017 Youngstown speech, promised residents auto jobs “are all coming back. Don’t move, don’t sell your house.” A year later, GM idled the plant and, as residents here are keen to highlight, it did so after receiving billions in taxpayer assistance, including $60m in state subsidies in exchange for a promise to keep the plant open through 2027.In 2019, Trump tweeted that he had been “working nicely with GM to get” the Lordstown deal done. But Lordstown Motors floundered almost from the start, suffering from scandals over inflated sales figures and battery range. By 2022, a new savior arrived: Foxconn. It agreed to buy the plant and a 55% stake in Lordstown Motors for $230m. That relationship soured, and Foxconn quit making the payments this year. The deal collapsed.In a sign of how little impact this “booming” transformation has had, the name “Foxconn” hardly registered with some Warren residents. They squinted as they tried to recall where they had heard it. Others pointed to other ventures they felt could have more impact – a proposed science-fiction museum and businesses at the farmers’ market.Outside the county courthouse, an employee who did not want their name printed said they knew of the Lordstown Motors collapse, but it was not top of mind for anyone they knew: “Lordstown is not where the money is. I don’t know where it’s at.”‘Foxconn didn’t come through’About 450 miles from Lordstown, in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, Foxconn in 2017 promised to build a hi-tech factory campus that would employ 13,000 people in exchange for $4.5bn in tax incentives. Residents were forced from their homes to make way for the factory, but very little was built.Kelly Gallaher is among those who fought the project, and she sees a replay in Lordstown as Foxconn promises big things while its deal falls apart. Mount Pleasant residents tried to warn Lordstown on social media when Foxconn showed interest in the plant, she said.“Lordstown needed a savior angel, and they weren’t in a position with any other backup choices. But it isn’t a surprise that Foxconn didn’t come through,” Gallaher said.Guy Coviello, the chief executive of the Youngstown/Warren Chamber of Commerce, dismissed such concerns. Foxconn is not asking for incentives or making big promises, he said, claiming that the problems in Wisconsin were largely “political ballyhooing”.The idea that autonomous tractors will save Lordstown is not landing with many residents. But one thing everyone around Lordstown seems to agree on is the notion that the region’s manufacturing heyday is never returning – for no other reason than automation has made it impossible. Manufacturers simply don’t need the labor force they once did.Mahoning still has much to offer. Its population loss is stabilizing, the cost of living is low, it is near other major population centers and it offers a huge workforce, Ayers said.Those selling points may bring more investment. But after so many broken promises, any floated idea is met with skepticism. Reflecting on Obama’s speech, Green said the president’s reassurance was a “great feeling that day”.“What a stark contrast to 10 years later.” More

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      For the love of cars: will steep gas prices stall Democrats’ midterm hopes?

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      For the love of cars: will steep gas prices stall Democrats’ midterm hopes? Economy in focus: America has a love affair with cars – but soaring prices are causing a rift. In the midwest, Adam Gabbatt asks voters what they thinkThe Henry Ford museum, in Dearborn, Michigan, is a tribute to America’s obsession with the motor vehicle.The sprawling complex, set across 12 acres, is home to early examples of the Ford Model T, the mass-produced, affordable vehicle that set the US on the path of a car-dominant culture, as well as other era-defining vehicles right up to today.US midterms 2022: the key racesRead moreWalking past these cars, it is possible to trace the history of the car in the US. With the occasional exception, that history has been: let’s make more cars, and let’s make them gigantic. The tiny Model T – early versions were about 11ft long – was replaced by cars like the Chevrolet Bel Air in the 1950s, and the Cadillac Coupe deVille of the 1960s, leading to the gigantic trucks and SUVs that are bestsellers in the US today.With gas prices recently soaring, however, many Americans are now suffering as a result of that thirst for size. It’s a problem for people across the country, and with key midterm elections looming next month, the historic spike in the cost of fuel will be one of the issues that determines how the US votes.Republicans have hammered Joe Biden and the Democratic party over the increase, despite the cost being tied to issues, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that are largely outside the government’s control. Prices have slowly declined in recent months, but news that Opec+, the global oil production cartel, will reduce daily production by 2m barrels, has rocked the Biden administration, weeks before the vote.That has provided Republicans with another opening to attack Democrats over gas prices, inflation and general cost of living. But outside the Henry Ford museum, the more than $120m the party has spent on ads related to inflation mostly didn’t seem to have had an impact – so far.“I truly believe that some of the higher prices that we’re paying right now is the price of freedom. I mean, you know, you don’t want to give in to all the dictators all over the world and you want to live in a free world, you have to make some compromises,” said Louis Sommer.“I’m willing to pay $6 a gallon or $10 a gallon if that’s what it takes to live in a free world.”Sommer, 39, drives a Ford Edge, which averages 22mpg, and also has an old Ford pickup truck, which guzzles about 14mpg. With prices hovering at just over $4 a gallon in this part of Michigan, those cars cost a lot of money to run.Despite not classifying himself as a Democrat – “If I would vote right now, I would probably vote Libertarian,” Sommer said – he supports Biden’s efforts on foreign policy, and had not been swayed by the Republican rhetoric. As for driving, Sommer, who works in the auto industry, said he had considered buying an electric car, but believes they are too expensive.“An electric car, as a second car, would make a lot of sense,” he said.“But right now, the electric cars are $50,000-$60,000. For a second car, it should be more like, you know, $20,000-$30,000. And you know, the infrastructure is not there in the neighborhood that I’m living in.”Gas prices in the US peaked, according to the Energy Information Administration, in June 2022, at an average of about $5 a gallon, compared with $2.42 in January 2021. Costs surged first as people returned to the roads post-Covid, and then again after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. By this September, prices had dropped to an average nationwide of $3.77, but the Opec+ news has not been kind: in the past two weeks prices have risen again to almost $4 a gallon.In a country where, outside a handful of cities, there is hardly a thriving public transit system, the cost of gas has always been a key issue, and a uniquely visible one: with prices displayed in neon letters at every gas station, to go for a drive is to witness multiple adverts for inflation.The increases are also more noticeable than the parallel spikes the country is experiencing with groceries as most people pay for gas on its own, rather than bundling it with other items.In Ohio, south of Michigan, the higher prices are being keenly felt, particularly in smaller, rural towns where grocery stores and doctor’s offices are frequently a long drive away.Ohio’s economy boomed through coal, oil and iron ore mining before the state switched to manufacturing cars, rubber and steel in the mid-1900s. By the 1980s those trades had moved abroad, and like much of the midwest, Ohio has suffered from a lack of well-paying jobs.In the town of Bucryus, which is ​​home to the annual Bucyrus bratwurst festival, and calls itself the bratwurst capital of America, gas was selling at $3.95 a gallon in early October, and local people are being forced to adapt.“I’ve been doing less traveling and just generally doing less stuff,” said Ned Ohl, who works at the Crazy Fox Saloon. “Everything just takes a little more money than I would have normally spent.”Ohl, 33, is a history buff, and had planned a trip this summer to the Waverly Hills sanatorium, a Tudor gothic former tuberculosis hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. He postponed the trip indefinitely as he couldn’t afford the gas.As for who is to blame, Ohl said: “I try not to get into the politics of it.”Kim King, who was in the bar celebrating the finalization of her divorce, said she had also been affected.“Nobody’s traveling,” King said. “I drive my daughter to volleyball and softball, but I don’t do anything outside of that. I’m not about to take a road trip anywhere.”Bucryus was among the towns to benefit from the rise of the motor vehicle. For decades Route 30, which runs across the US from New York City to San Francisco, ran right through the center of Bucyrus, and the town had a boom period during the prohibition era, when bootleggers used underground tunnels to hide and transport their wares. A speakeasy bar underneath the Crazy Fox Saloon, allegedly frequented by Al Capone, still exists today, but only as a little-visited tourist attraction.There was no sign of mob activity in the Crazy Fox, where bar patron Mike, who declined to give his last name, was more than happy to link gas prices to politics.“It went up right after that dumb-ass president stopped the pipeline,” Mike said. He was referring to Biden, and the planned Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried oil from Canada to Texas. Biden revoked the permit for the pipeline on his first day in office. Politifact and other factcheckers have found no connection between the cancellation of the pipeline and the increase in gas prices.Nevertheless, Mike, who manages a hotel next to the Crazy Fox Saloon, was set in his opinion: “I think we could have put a puppet in and done a better job,”Mike said his car use had been affected.“​​I don’t go anywhere other than to the grocery store,” he said.“I go to Marion [a town 20 miles south of Bucyrus] once every other week to pick up my son; other than that it costs too damn much to run a vehicle right now.”Mike said his son stays with him every other weekend. They used to take trips out to Lake Erie, but: “You can’t do that any more.”Americans tend to drive larger cars than people in other countries do. So far in 2022 the three top-selling vehicles in the US are all pickup trucks – the Ford F-Series takes top spot – and the majority of the rest are SUVs. The bestselling car in the UK is the Vauxhall Corsa, a compact car that is four feet shorter than the smallest of Ford’s F-Series vehicles. The bestselling cars in France, Italy and Germany are all tiny compared with American vehicles.Bigger cars need bigger engines, and more fuel. The Corsa, according to its stats, will average 45.6mpg in the city. The most economical of the Ford F-Series vehicles will burn through 25mpg.It wasn’t always the case. The Henry Ford museum documents a move in the US toward smaller cars in the 1970s, triggered in part by spikes in gas prices, while the New York Times reported in 1973 that the rush “toward smaller, less extravagant cars” had left Ford, Chrysler and GM scrambling to switch up assembly lines.The museum also offers a glimpse into a time when the government was more willing to clamp down on car use.In 1974 Richard Nixon signed into law a 55mph speed limit on all national highways, after Opec caused a gas price spike when it stopped shipping oil to the US. The new speed limit was designed to conserve gas. Thirty years earlier, during the second world war, the US had introduced another effort to encourage people to carpool to save fuel for the war effort, with one public awareness poster in the Henry Ford museum telling Americans: “When you ride ALONE you ride with Hitler!”Driving south-east into Ohio – and not with Hitler – the flat, open landscape gave way to thick woods and rolling hills, marking the beginnings of the Appalachian mountains. This part of the state is not doing well financially. The small rural towns that dot Morgan county are pockmarked by closed storefronts and buildings with flaking paint. After decades of decline, as industry left, frequently the only businesses still active are car-related: repair shops, gas stations and the occasional car dealership.That the auto industry is the only thriving trade speaks to the reliance people here have on their cars. There’s no public transport, and frequently people have to drive miles to stores like Family Dollar, Dollar General or Kroger for groceries or essentials.In Stockport, a town of about 500 people on the Muskingum River, CJ’s Family Restaurant is one of the most popular eateries. Carolyn Schramm, 78, has owned the restaurant, which offers diner-style breakfasts and coffee, and more substantial dinner options such as an $8.25 sirloin steak and $6.80 spaghetti with meat sauce, for 35 years.The price of food has gone up this year, and with the rise in gas prices so has the price of traveling to buy supplies.“I need to put prices up,” Schramm said. “But I haven’t done it yet.”It’s difficult in a restaurant where Schramm said “customers become your family”. Some people come to CJ’s two or three times a day to eat, and in a town where the median household income is $34,338 – that figure for the US as a whole is $67,521 – many people are not flush with cash.“There’s one couple I know they say they have to be careful how much they come.”Schramm was wearing a T-shirt that said “Proud grandma of a 2020 senior”, in recognition of her granddaughter, who graduated from Morgan high school two years ago. She said gas prices had “made a big difference” for her children and grandchildren, who all live an hour’s drive away.“So far they haven’t had to come less; fortunately my kids have pretty good jobs, but you never know from one day to the next,” she said.Despite the spike, it won’t affect how, or whether, Schramm votes in November. She doesn’t blame the government for the increase, but said: “I don’t get in much on politics because frankly I think they’re all crooks.”The road from Stockport to the Pennsylvania border is quite wiggly, the rapid ascending and descending placing stress on both vehicle and stomach. Washington, a town of 13,000 people that lies 10 miles across the border, had the cheapest gas prices yet, with Sam’s Club offering it at $3.71 a gallon.On one of Washington’s main streets Tyler Weller, 21, had just finished work. He works as a traffic controller at a construction site, and is able to walk to work, but he knows a lot of people who have struggled more to cope with gas prices.“We don’t have a lot of public transport in this town, it’s kinda small. So some of my friends have been borrowing money just to drive to work,” he said. “The grocery store, you can push it off or whatever, but you have to get to work.”Weller said he is thankful he gets paid weekly – he earns $15 an hour – as he hasn’t had to worry as much about filling up his car. But he has still had to make sacrifices.“Usually I just like driving around, like a decompression ride,” he said. “I’ve had to drop those.”Others, like Weller, drive to relax, and it could be that there are impacts on people’s mental health as they are unable to turn to traditional forms of release. Weller said while he had noticed prices had gone down, they weren’t low enough for him to run his car the way he used to. And at the Luxury Box restaurant in Washington, a woman who gave her name as Kath said people celebrating cheaper gas have a short memory.“I think people are naive when they see the prices drop – they get excited, and that’s not exactly where they should be – even though it’s a little better on our wallets,” Kath said.“They notice the prices are better, they think they’re saving money, but in actuality we’re not, compared to where we were when it used to be $2.50-something.”Kath believed Biden and the Democrats could have done more to prevent the increase in prices, although she didn’t have specifics.“I think there’s a lot behind the scenes that we don’t know,” she said.As for how she was faring financially, Kath echoed a sense of hopelessness that others had exhibited across Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.“It’s just not the gas prices. At this point it’s the whole economy. Our food prices are outrageous. There are increases on everything – other than how much you get paid,” Kath said.“I make very decent money for myself, but I feel like I’m now making minimum wage, and I haven’t felt like that in years.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022GasInflationAutomotive industryJoe BidenUS economyUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      The American EV boom is about to begin. Does the US have the power to charge it?

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      The American EV boom is about to begin. Does the US have the power to charge it? States have plans to ban gas-powered cars and the White House wants chargers along highways, but implementation is a challengeSpeaking in front of a line of the latest electric vehicles (EVs) at this month’s North American International Auto Show, President Joe Biden declared: “The great American road trip is going to be fully electrified.”Most vehicles on the road are still gas guzzlers, but Washington is betting big on change, hoping that major federal investment will help reach a target set by the White House for 50% of new cars to be electric by 2030. But there are roadblocks – specifically when it comes to charging them all. “Range anxiety,” or how far one can travel before needing to charge, is still cited as a major deterrent for potential EV buyers.The auto industry recently passed the 5% mark of EV market share – a watershed moment, analysts say, before rapid growth. New policies at the state and local level could very well spur that growth: the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed this summer, offers tax credits of $4,000 to purchase a used EV and up to $7,500 for certain new ones. In August, California, the nation’s largest state and economy, announced rules that would ban all new gas-powered cars by 2035. New York plans to follow.So now, the race is on to provide chargers to power all those new EVs.The administration’s target of 500,000 public charging units by 2030 is a far cry from the current count of nearly 50,000, according to the Department of Energy’s estimate. And those new chargers will have to be fast – what’s known as Level 2 or 3 charging – and functional in order to create a truly reliable system. Today, many are not.Last week, the White House approved plans for all 50 states, along with Washington DC, and Puerto Rico, to set up chargers along highways, unlocking $1.5bn in federal funding to that end. The money comes from the landmark infrastructure bill passed last year, which invests $7.5bn for EV charging in total.Electric vehicle charging stations get green light across USRead moreBut how much of that money is spent is largely going to be determined at the local level. “It’s a difference between policy and practice,” said Drew Lipsher, the chief development officer at Volta, an EV charging provider. “Now that the federal government has these policies, the question becomes, OK, how does this actually get implemented?” The practice, he said, is up to states and municipalities.As EV demand spikes, a growing number of cities are adopting policies for EV charging construction. In July, the city of Columbus passed an “EV readiness” ordinance, which will require new parking structures to host charging stations proportionate to the number of total parking spots, with at least one that is ADA-accessible. Honolulu and Atlanta have passed similar measures.One major challenge is creating a distribution model that can meet a diversity of needs.At the moment, most EV owners charge their cars at home with a built-in unit, which governments can help subsidize. But for apartment dwellers or those living in multi-family homes, that’s less feasible. “When we’re thinking about the largest pieces of the population, that’s where we need to really be focusing our attention. This is a major equity issue,” said Alexia Melendez Martineau, the policy manager at Plug-In America, an EV consumer advocacy group.Bringing power to people is one such solution. In Hoboken, New Jersey, Volta is working with the city to create a streetside charging network. “The network will be within a five-minute walk of every resident,” said Lipsher. “Hopefully this is a way for us to really import it to cities who believe public EV charging infrastructure on the street is important.” Similarly, in parts of Los Angeles – as in Berlin and London – drivers can get a charge from a street lamp.And there may be new technologies that could help, exciting experts and EV enthusiasts alike. That could include the roads themselves charging EVs through a magnetizable concrete technology being piloted in Indiana and Detroit. And bidirectional charging, where, similar to solar panels, drivers can put their electricity back into the grid – or perhaps even to another EV, through what’s known as electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE). Nissan approved the technology for their Leaf model this month.Prochazka said he imagined a future where cities rely on excess EV charge when energy demand spikes, rather than polluting peaker plants that are currently turned on to boost supply. “We haven’t even scratched the surface on the opportunities that are gonna exist once we get bidirectional happening,” said Prochazka.Experts hope these advances will help bridge the gap in historically disconnected areas, such as rural communities and communities of color. But first, planners have to listen: although extensive community engagement trials have been praised in states such as Arizona, the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter in Indiana accused the state’s draft plan of excluding Black communities.“The more the community has input on where these chargers go, how they’re used and how they’re designed,” said Melendez Martineau, “the better they’re going to serve the community.”Still, the US seems significantly more poised to electrify now than it did six months ago, says Dale Hall, a senior researcher who focuses on EVs at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT).He says that the private sector, which is behind much of the charging infrastructure, is moving ahead with clear signals of support from the public sector. Stronger local policies or cutting-edge technology will only help dictate the speed of that transition, Hall added.He thinks the Biden administration’s goal for chargers is achievable. “The business case is just going to keep getting better.”TopicsElectric, hybrid and low-emission carsBiden administrationUS politicsClimate crisisAutomotive industrynewsReuse this content More