The Biden administration is pushing electric vehicles as the future. So are major auto makers. But how will that play out in red states? We travel to small-town Indiana to find out.
The Biden administration is pushing electric vehicles as the future. So are major auto makers. But how will that play out in red states? We travel to small-town Indiana to find out.
Read the full transcript here.
Host: Gustavo Arellano
Guests: L.A. Times White House reporter Noah Bierman
More reading: Can California’s electric-vehicle push overcome the red-state backlash?
Majority of voters favor gasoline-car phaseout. But all-electric goal faces tough opposition
California bans sales of new gas-powered cars by 2035. Now the real work begins
Kokomo, Ind., is car country.
Jeff: Any city outside Stuttgart, Germany, we have the longest continual relationship with the auto industry in the world.
Gustavo Arellano: The town's fate has been tied to the automotive industry for more than a century… and that history runs on gas. But is that fuel still Kokomo’s future?
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Gustavo Arellano: The Biden administration’s push to reduce emissions and move toward electric cars has been embraced by Democrats and liberal-leaning states like California. But for conservatives, they’ve long seen the EV revolution as liberal government overreach. So how do you change such thinking?
I'm Gustavo Arellano. You're listening to “The Times: Essential News from the L.A. Times.” It's Friday, Dec. 16, 2022.
Today… are electric cars the next culture war issue? A new electric battery plant in deep-red Indiana is putting that to the test.
Gustavo Arellano: Joining me to talk about the political future of electric vehicles is my L.A. Times colleague and White House reporter, Noah Bierman.
Gustavo Arellano: Noah, welcome to “The Times.”
Noah Bierman: Thanks, Gustavo.
Gustavo Arellano: So a few weeks ago you were in Kokomo to look at how people in the United States are feeling about electric cars. Why Kokomo?
Noah Bierman: Yeah. A lot of people have probably heard more about Detroit than Kokomo when it comes to the American history of cars and continued production, but they've actually had the longest relationship with building cars in the United States.
Noah Bierman: The history is the whole history of the automobile industry, and that's a lot of ups and downs. You have boom times when people who had these middle-class production jobs did quite well, but you've also had a lot of bankruptcies, mergers, acquisitions.
Noah Bierman: I mean, Stellantis, which is now the main employer in Kokomo, a lot of people have never heard of it, but they're huge. They own, you know, not just Dodge and Chrysler and these traditionally American brands, but they also own some of these European brands. And so Kokomo is really closely tied to what happens in the auto industry here, and have been, you know, as I said, for over a hundred years.
Noah Bierman: So to better understand it, I decided to pack my bags, head to the airport and fly to Indiana so I could get to Kokomo.
Noah Bierman: This is Noah Bierman on, in the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times, and I'm at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C.
Flew to Indianapolis, which is about an hour away.
And Kokomo’s history is really closely tied to a guy named Elwood Haynes. Elwood Haynes was this amazing inventor who drove down Pumpkin Vine Pike almost 130 years ago in a horseless carriage and that was a big deal at the time, obviously, ’cause there weren't a lot of other cars going around. His former mansion is a museum, the Elwood Haynes Museum. And it's really cool. It's got one of these, old-fashioned cars that he made, with a jump seat in the front that they called the mother-in-law seat.
Noah Bierman: And you can draw your own conclusions about that sort of old-school type of humor.
Noah Bierman: I talked to Jeff Shyvee, who himself is a car buff.
Jeff: It's a hobby. And an avocation and vocation. Both.
Noah Bierman: He's also a consultant for the museum and knows everything in minute detail about the history of cars in the state of Indiana.
Jeff: Actually, Indiana, well into the 20th century, had more manufacturers than Michigan did.
Noah Bierman: Jeff told me about this fierce competition at the end of the 1800s over who was going to develop cars and who was going to develop the best cars.
Jeff: It was kind of, um, I wouldn't say Silicon Valley, but for 1800s technology, there were people here and they just more or less started working, trying to find solutions.
It was organic. Everything that happened here was organic.
Noah Bierman: You know, Jeff was telling me the whole time they were there, they never really had a break from being a car place. Even though we've heard so much more about Detroit.
Gustavo Arellano: Yeah, that's really cool history. I learned some about it, especially the car industry in Indiana, when I was in South Bend a couple years ago. That's where the Studebaker company was, there for decades, but that shut down way back in the 1960s. But you're saying that Kokomo still has these close ties to the auto industry.
Noah Bierman: Yeah, they've kept it up and it's been really essential to life there. I mean, everybody you talk to there. If they didn't work at a factory, it might be an uncle, might be their mom, might be their dad, And so they have this long history in making cars and car parts in Kokomo. They're currently doing power train operations and factories, um, and they have four or five factories running on traditional, gas-powered car production.
Noah Bierman: But, they're clearing some corn fields and they're building a battery plant.
Noah Bierman: It's a joint venture, between Stellantis, which is that company that owns Chrysler and Jeep, and Samsung, which, you know, you might see in your television set or your smartphone. And they're getting a very big subsidy from the state as well as some tax breaks and free land from the local government.
They're trying to get ahead in this next phase in the car revolution. But there's a lot of tension there because you've got a lot of people whose jobs are tied to gas cars and who, frankly, just like gas cars. And so, the question is, will people embrace this change or will they be hostile to it?
Gustavo Arellano: After the break… how people in Kokomo feel about the EV revolution.
Gustavo Arellano: So Noah… I understand why people in Kokomo, Ind., would take a wait-and-see attitude with an upcoming electric battery factory there. So many people’s jobs are tied to the gas-powered car plants that are currently right there. So that makes me wonder… What's the overall economy like right now in Kokomo?
Noah Bierman: They have the highest unemployment in the state. So, things are not great there to begin with. And they've lost a lot of jobs in recent years, particularly in manufacturing. So that's a problem. They do need this factory. They do need more people to get jobs. And I think people are well aware of that. But there's anxiety. I mean, first of all, the factory itself, they don't know if it's gonna be unionized. And the current jobs in the current factories are unionized, so they don't know what it's going to pay, what the working conditions will be like there.
Noah Bierman: What do you think of all this?
Clip: Oh, there's a lot of controversy right now because they want to make it non-union. And we're union. I'm 685 and…
Noah Bierman: We talked to a number of workers. Not all of them wanted us to use their name or put them on tape because there is anxiety.
Noah Bierman: And how old are you?
John Brumfiel: I am 50.
Noah Bierman: And what do you do for a living?
John Brumfiel: I work at, uh, Kokomo Transmission Plant.
Noah Bierman: Just what I was hoping. I saw your union shirt.
Noah Bierman: But one of them, John Brumfiel, was pretty candid about the concerns that he and some of his colleagues have about whether they will need as many jobs when they shift to electric cars.
Noah Bierman: Are you concerned about that?
John Brumfiel: Yeah, I'm concerned as far as being an automotive worker. Could be a potential job loss. And we depend on our jobs around here, ’cause that's our…
Noah Bierman: And you also just talk to people who love cars the way they are. You know, they have really cool, tricked-out, jeeps and trucks, and they don't want to give that up. Now, you can build those into an electric car, and maybe at some point they will, but as they stand right now, they feel pretty connected to the traditional car.
Noah Bierman: Would you ever want an electric vehicle?
John Brumfiel: Would I? Well, I don't think I'd want one.
Noah Bierman: Mm-hmm.
John Brumfiel: It's just that the fact that, you know, I'm not a person that likes electric cars, but…
Noah Bierman: What do you drive now?
John Brumfiel: Uh, the Town and Country of 2000. Town and Country.
Noah Bierman: OK. Everybody drives some kind of Chrysler, don't they?
John Brumfiel: Oh yeah. You got to, if you work there, you got to stand by it, you know?
Gustavo Arellano: What about people in Kokomo who do own an electric car? Did you talk to any of them?
Noah Bierman: So you bought an electric car.
Jennifer Cecil: Uh-huh.
Noah Bierman: When did you buy it?
Jennifer Cecil: Uh, November of 2021. I actually researched it the summer of 2021, is when I actually…
Noah Bierman: Jen Cecil works downtown. Right around the corner from her is one of these sculptures with one of Haynes' first cars. She went to Elwood Haynes Elementary School. So she's very much a Kokomo person.
Noah Bierman: She actually drives an electric Mustang, uh, one of those cool-looking, newer model Mustangs that you plug in.
Jennifer Cecil: I typically will plug in, uh, Mondays and Fridays. So I can have a full charge.
Noah Bierman: And, there are a lot of people with electric cars here?
Jennifer Cecil: Yeah. I mean, I, I kind of have to fight some Teslas in the parking garage, but, uh, yeah, there's, there's quite a few. Quite a few Teslas.
Noah Bierman: But she wanted us to know that this was not saying something about her politics.
Jennifer Cecil: I just, I just wanted an electric vehicle. So it doesn't have anything to do with, um, you know, that go, go green or…
Noah Bierman: I was wondering… Yeah, that's what I was wondering because…
Noah Bierman: She's a Republican. She doesn't want to be looked at as somebody who's thumbing her nose at everybody else because she bought a green car.
Jennifer Cecil: I don't really like being roped into that. I just really enjoyed the car. I like the car.
Noah Bierman: She wants this to be a car that she bought just ’cause she likes it and she doesn't mind, you know, paying less for gas. That's a pleasure to her. But mostly it's just a cool car.
Jennifer Cecil: I kind of think that you kind of get this reputation if you're driving one. That you’re viewed a certain way whenever that's, uh, not necessarily the truth.
Noah Bierman: There's a perception that she conveyed that just the fact that you drove an electric car said something about you and she didn't want it to say it about her.
Noah Bierman: You know, I think back at the early days of hybrids and how people who drove a Prius were looked at a certain way, like uh-oh, you know, there's a latte-sipping, Birkenstock-wearing Prius driver, right? Who's gonna tell us how much better they are than us? I think that's a big part of the perception, too, with some of these purchases.
Noah Bierman: It costs more money to get it, and then once you get it, you get to go around telling everybody else how much better you are than them and that's I think what really sticks with people. And that's where, you know, the car companies have to work to make sure that that kind of perception doesn't stick, because then it makes this a very polarizing purchase.
Gustavo Arellano: After the break, the politics of electric cars.
Gustavo Arellano: Noah, people who love their gas cars can complain about EVs all they want. But, most of the major automakers, like Ford and GM, are going all in on electric cars.
I mean, GM has even stated that it’s going to phase out all gas-powered cars by 2035.
Noah Bierman: They are, and, they've all said that, “This time it's real.” In the past they had only nodded toward electric cars, but really didn’t put all their efforts into it, and they're working on that. But part of what they're working on is a marketing effort, to convince people that everybody can have an electric car.
Noah Bierman: It's not just for the coastal elites. But they're pushing back against, you know, a lot of things, including politics.
Noah Bierman: There are a lot conservative media people who are saying electric cars are an attack on your freedom.
News Clip: It's becoming clear that like so much else that we love about America, the freedom of the open road, our freedom to travel as far as we want, whenever we want, is under attack.
Noah Bierman: They are basically, not going to work. They're sort of limousine-liberal subsidies from the Biden administration.
News Clip: Now Biden promised this big $7,500 tax credit. I know that's what you're thinking if you bought a new EV.
Noah Bierman: So, you know, it's not as simple as just putting the cars out there and everybody's going to be able to afford one or want to get one.
News Clip: We insist, absolutely insist on making our own decisions about what cars we drive, where we set our thermostats and the type of food we eat, thank you very much.
Gustavo Arellano: Yeah, what's the Biden administration doing on that front?
Noah Bierman: A huge part of President Biden's agenda is electric cars.
Noah Bierman: I mean, they're spending over $100 billion on both these subsidies for places like Kokomo, but also building an electric-car-charging infrastructure across the country. And, also you are getting rebates when you buy an electric car.
Gustavo Arellano: Yeah, California is also a big part of this push. Earlier this summer, we did an entire episode about how the state’s going to eliminate all new gas-powered vehicles by 2035. Why is it such a big deal for California to make that move?
Noah Bierman: Well, obviously the market clout is the biggest thing. There is a huge market clout for California. There are also other states that follow California’s fuel standards, so it’s not just California when California makes this decision. And then the industry itself just responds because, you know, they got to make all these cars for California, so they’re going to make them for everywhere else.
Noah Bierman: But you've got, a whole group of about 17 attorneys general who are suing the Biden administration saying California should not have the right to set its own fuel standards. So there's definite pushback to this.
The attorney general of Indiana, Todd Rokita, is one of them. He's in this interesting spot because his state is subsidizing a battery factory and is really trying to get behind this move. The governor's gone to South Korea to meet with Samsung on the battery production issue, because they're part of the battery factory. Yet at the same time, his attorney general, a fellow Republican, is suing to stop these regulations.
Gustavo Arellano: What about the local politicians in Kokomo? How do they view this push toward EVs?
Noah Bierman: Local politicians really see this as an important diversification, important part of the future.
Tyler Moore: We've always been known as having an entrepreneurial spirit. For decades we've been known as a city of firsts because of that entrepreneurial spirit as well.
Noah Bierman: The mayor of Kokomo is a Republican and is not somebody who says that, you know, we’re going to be all electric cars right away. But he's really behind this. He thinks the town needs it. Overall, he wants the town to be more diverse in everything it does as far as its economy, because it is so closely tied to automobiles. But even within automobiles, he feels they need to be diverse and have the ability to be part of, you know, making hybrids, making traditional gas cars. And making battery-operated cars.
Tyler Moore: We're proud to be on the forefront of the electric-vehicle technology. We had really embraced it. And so knowing that, that's where the automotive industry was headed, we tried to get ahead of the game now and we're proud to be a part of this innovation.
Gustavo Arellano: So Mayor Moore is supportive, but Indiana's attorney general is one of the attorneys general, as you said, suing California over its push for electric vehicles. So what does Mayor Moore say about that left-right divide with the electric vehicles?
Noah Bierman: I think he's trying his hardest to stay out of it.
Tyler Moore: It's pretty aggressive. I think that, to each their own as well. Um, you know, I would share the same concerns, that even though there is a great push, um, I still feel an option for consumers is important.
Noah Bierman: He says he doesn't really think that the market will go all electric by 2035. He expects a sort of a mix of what people want. So his political move seems to be, to just to stay out of it, make sure that his town is in position, has a foot in the door on batteries. He doesn't want to be in that debate at all.
Gustavo Arellano: Why are electric cars even being politicized at all? I mean, you have gas prices, higher than ever. Inflation, higher than ever. And on the other side, with automobiles, I mean the history of automobiles is a history of progress. We are not running on carburetors anymore, you know. We're not running where you have to hand-crank the very front of the engine, like an old model Ts from Ford.
Gustavo Arellano: So shouldn't progress in how we get around generally be accepted by everyone?
Noah Bierman: I mean, I think that's still an open question. I think there is potential that everybody eventually does say, “You know what? I like these cars better.”
Noah Bierman: It's just gonna take time. But plenty of people I talk to, particularly in Indiana, don't like the idea that California is mandating that they phase out the sale of new gas cars by 2035. ’Cause they don't want it to be seen as something that's being pushed from the left.
Gustavo Arellano: Yeah, and here in California, the transition to EVs is definitely well underway. I mean, I'm seeing a lot of Teslas, and before that, it was Priuses.
Noah Bierman: Yeah. And you know, I'm in Washington, D.C., and it's a similar situation. You see a ton of electric cars on the road. The charging stations are real crowded. People are competing for ’em. But, statistically, a lot of states in the country, people are not buying electric cars. And the L.A. Times actually conducted a poll and it's really sharply divided along a lot of the other divisions in the country, along party, along belief in human-caused climate change, along income, along rural and urban.
Noah Bierman: So there are a lot of divisions and there are a lot of parts of the country that really don't see the point in electric cars. They also see them as very costly. The industry's working on changing that, but you know, at the moment, the most popular cars are things like Teslas, which, you know, I don't know about you, but that seems pretty expensive to me.
Gustavo Arellano: Way too expensive, and their build is totally flimsy! But that’s a whole other thing. But finally, Noah, to what extent do culture war tactics — this idea that if you drive an electric car, that says something about your politics — how does that impede the spread of electric cars outside of places like D.C. and California?
Noah Bierman: I think they have that potential. We see that in the polling, that there is this divide, Democrat versus Republican, on buying electric cars, but I'm not convinced it's a permanent divide. You know, a lot of things that start out as quite polarizing, over time, are no longer polarizing.
Noah Bierman: One of the interesting things is a lot of the people who I spoke with, who said they would never get electric cars, said, “But you know, I don't think hybrids are so bad.” Well, think back to where we were with hybrids just a few years ago, and those were seen as pretty polarizing. So, over time, some of these things do wear away, you know. They're not fixed forever as a political thing. But, for now, there definitely is a divide, at least numerically. And that's a challenge for people who think that, you know, we need electrification to have any hope of fighting climate change.
Gustavo Arellano: Noah, thank you so much for this conversation.
Noah Bierman: Thanks, Gustavo. It was great talking to you.
Gustavo Arellano: And that’s it for this episode of “The Times: Essential News from the L.A. Times.”
Kasia Broussalian was the jefa on this episode. Heba Elorbany was the editor, and Mike Heflin mixed and mastered it.
Our show is produced by Denise Guerra, Kasia Broussalian, David Toledo, Ashlea Brown and Helen Lin. Our editorial assistants are Roberto Reyes and Nicolas Perez. Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mark Nieto and Mike Heflin. Our editor is Kinsee Morlan. Our executive producers are Jazmín Aguilera, Shani Hilton and Heba Elorbany. And our theme music is by Andrew Eapen.
I'm Gustavo Arellano. We'll be back Monday with all the news and desmadre. Gracias.