Trump ended the EV mandate. Here’s what it means for the auto industry.

President Trump’s Inauguration Day executive order undoing Biden’s multibillion-dollar effort to usher in a transition to electric vehicles has rocked the auto industry, environmental groups, and other stakeholders, as they grapple to understand the likely impact.

Trump’s order, which ended Biden’s “electric vehicle mandate” will slow — not stop — the long-term transition to electric vehicles, experts say.

“This transition cannot stop,” said K. Venkatesh Prasad, senior vice president at the Center for Automotive Research. “We’ve seen long-term investments in [EVs]. Those things don’t change.”

The changes could give companies more leeway while adjusting to the transition and consumers more reason to buy gas-powered cars. Environmentalists warn that a slower transition endangers efforts critical to cutting greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change.

In his Inauguration Day executive order, titled “Unleashing American Energy,” Trump ended a 2021 Biden administration policy that pledged electric vehicles would make up 50% of new car sales in the United States by 2030. The policy wasn’t legally binding.

“We will end the Green New Deal … saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to our great American autoworkers,” Trump declared in his inaugural speech at the U.S. Capitol on Monday, as he vowed to make the United States a “rich nation again.”

Although Trump described the order as an effort to rescue the auto industry, analysts say it is unclear if Trump’s proposals would boost the auto industry or help save autoworker jobs in the long term.

On Monday, Trump also halted the distribution of federal funds for EV chargers. He also signaled that he will seek to cancel tax credits of up to $7,500 for people who buy new EVs and revoke a waiver granted to California last year that allows it to ban sales of gasoline-only cars by 2035. Some of those standards are adopted by more than a dozen other states.

Stellantis, which owns Jeep, Chrysler, Ram, and Dodge, called Trump’s approach “hugely positive” in a statement and said the company is “well positioned to adapt to the policy changes enacted by the new Administration.”

Ford and General Motors did not respond to a request for comment, but GM CEO Mary Barra said in a statement on X about Trump’s inauguration that the company “looks forward to working together on our shared goal of a strong U.S. automotive industry.”

Several factors make a reversal in the EV transition unlikely. U.S. auto manufacturers have sunk billions of dollars into long-term EV production. Plus, the U.S. auto industry faces enormous pressures to compete with foreign EV manufacturers, such as those in China that have forged ahead with EV production.

“Presidential cycles are four years. These [factories] are 20- to 30-year investments. When you build a factory, it doesn’t come and go,” said Prasad, adding that Trump’s executive order could result in shorter-term changes such as whether automakers introduce “hybrids or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles or range extender EVs.”

“Carmakers will start making shifts that are easy,” he said.

EV-related production has also cropped up in many red states, such as Tennessee, Georgia, and Kentucky, in recent years, making it likely that state and local politicians would oppose an end to investments that have created thousands of jobs and new cash flow to build factories.

Experts also say it remains to be seen whether Trump’s electric vehicle policies would do much to save auto manufacturing jobs, which have for decades been outsourced to countries where labor is cheaper. EV-related jobs only make up a small portion of the U.S. auto industry.

“It doesn’t look to me at the moment like this will have much effect at all,” said Susan Schurman, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. “This is symbolic. I don’t think it has a big effect on American auto jobs.”

The thinking behind Trump’s claim that EVs kill auto jobs stems from the fact that EVs have fewer parts and require fewer workers than gas-powered cars. A 2024 policy report from the America First Policy Institute, a think tank formed after Trump’s first term to promote his policies, said that the Biden administration’s EV policies would wipe out some 200,000 jobs.

On the campaign trail last year, Trump heavily courted autoworker votes, a critical voting bloc in Michigan, saying the Biden administration’s EV mandates were “killing Michigan jobs.” Upon taking the oath of office Monday, Trump thanked autoworkers, saying he did “tremendously with their vote.” (It is unclear what evidence Trump had for his statement.)

Some analysts say that when accounting for the entire EV supply chain, electric-vehicle production does not require fewer jobs than making cars that run on fossil fuels.

"There is no job killing associated with the transition to EVs,” said Prasad, the industry analyst. “There are fewer jobs on assembly lines if you take a myopic view. But if you take a broader perspective and look at jobs required to create batteries and jobs required to make cells that go into batteries, there are more jobs there.”

John Murphy, an auto industry analyst at Bank of America, said that in the short term, a slower EV transition could be beneficial to auto-industry job preservation, although it poses longer-term risks.

“If the transition slows down, there’s less job risk immediately, … for the moment it will probably help jobs,” Murphy said. “But if 10 years in the future, EVs are really taking off and we haven’t made the requisite investments, it could really hurt jobs in the U.S.”

The United Auto Workers union, which represents about 400,000 members, did not respond to a request for comment. The union had been working closely with the Biden administration, to facilitate a transition to electric vehicles that promoted good-paying union jobs. The union has long been threatened by off-shoring incentivized by trade deals as well as foreign automakers setting up shop in the antiunion South.

Shawn Fain, the union’s president, often sparred with Trump in 2024, but he appeared to adjust his approach to Trump in a Washington Post op-ed on Sunday, writing that the union was “ready to work with Trump,” specifically on trade policy that could keep auto jobs in the United States.

Fain did not comment on Trump’s EV policies, but he previously called Trump a “job-killer,” and said hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs could be at risk if EV investments are revoked.