Ashley Nunes

I get why the Biden administration is pushing electric vehicles so hard. To stop the planet from overheating, we’ll eventually need motor vehicles to produce…

It is past midnight on a quiet residential street in San Francisco and I have just left a taxi with a nagging feeling I didn’t…

An article by Ashley Nunes: Grab the popcorn and settle in: The great electric vehicle price war is here. Weeks after Tesla slashed prices across…

An article by Ashley Nunes: As Christmas approaches, not everyone is celebrating. American families — hit hard by inflation, wage stagnation and layoffs — must…

An op-ed by Ashley Nunes: A new age of motoring beckons. In the first nine months of 2022, Americans snapped up nearly 600,000 electric vehicles…

Keller Strother got his first Tesla, a Roadster, in 2011. He still has it, though his garage now includes two more Teslas and a vintage…

As California, New York, and other states move to phase out the sale of gasoline-powered cars, public officials routinely echo the Biden administration’s claim that…

As California, New York, and other states move to phase out the sale of gasoline-powered cars, public officials routinely echo the Biden administration’s claim that…

An article by Ashley Nunes: As Democrats celebrated the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, their glee was tempered by inaction over a long-standing…

An op-ed by Ashley Nunes: President Biden finally has his climate bill. Earlier this month, America’s 46th president signed the Inflation Reduction Act. The move—which…

An article by Ashley Nunes: With the midterm elections coming, Democrats are trying to push through key legislative priorities — including renewing the child tax credit (CTC), which gives working parents a credit for each child and will expire in December 2025. No one doubts that it will be renewed; the credit has broad bipartisan public support. But what will it look like? That’s less clear. In general, Democrats want an expansive version that sends funds to parents in poverty, as was true briefly during the pandemic; Republicans want to return to a more restrictive version that gives working parents a lower tax bill — which means that people who don’t owe taxes don’t get the benefit. But in January, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) refused to support the expanded version in the Build Back Better social spending bill, which meant the bill couldn’t pass an evenly divided Senate.

An article by Ashley Nunes: It’s now or never. That’s the message climate scientists have for politicians, policy wonks and anyone (and everyone) willing to listen. Members of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say that global carbon dioxide emissions must peak within the next three years to avert the most severe impacts of climate change. Their solution? Action that delivers, “rapid, deep and immediate” emissions cuts. For IPCC leadership, this entails “having the right policies, infrastructure and technology in place.”

An article co-written by Ashley Nunes: Procurement incentives are a widely leveraged policy lever to stimulate electric vehicle (EV) sales. However, their effectiveness in reducing transportation emissions depends on the behavioural characteristics of EV adopters. When an EV is used, under what conditions and by whom dictates whether or not these vehicles can deliver emissions reductions. Here, we document that replacing gasoline powered vehicles with EVs may—depending on behavioural characteristics—increase, not decrease, emissions. We further show that counterfactual vehicle inventory—how many vehicles a household would own absent an EV purchase—is an important influencer of these effects. We conclude that achieving emissions reductions using EVs requires redesigning procurement incentive programmes in a manner that (re)distributes incentives towards the second-hand EV market. Doing so would not only facilitate emissions reductions but also address fiscal prudency and regressivity concerns associated with these programmes.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of remarks made by Ashley Nunes during a Newsweek podcast debate about EVs being the future of transportation. ... Electric vehicles seem like a good idea, because we are often told that they're cleaner to drive and cheaper to own. But when you dig a little deeper, a different truth emerges. Are EVs cleaner than existing alternatives? Not in China, or the United States — where major auto markets derive the bulk of their power from coal. Are EVs cheaper to operate? Yes, but only if you hold onto those cars for a longer period of time, because they have higher upfront costs. Proponents of EVs say that things will get better over time, because they've become cleaner, and costs have dropped. But past performance is certainly no guarantee of future return. I'm not saying that driving gas guzzlers is the way to go; I just think that we should be honest with the public about what EVs can and cannot do, particularly when public funds are used to back climate policies.

An op-ed by Ashley Nunes: Americans fretting over gas prices could soon be in for relief. OPEC+ — a cartel of countries that controls some 80 per cent of proven oil reserves — last week hiked global production by an extra 400,000 barrels a day. Over a year, that’s enough to fill a large football stadium 53 times over. The result of boosting production? A drop in oil price. And when prices drop, if gas prices follow, consumers are happy. There is an alternative to relying on Saudi Arabia’s generosity: Going electric. When compared with gas guzzlers, electric vehicles (EVs) need less energy to move, which means more miles travelled per dollar spent. Electricity is also cheaper than gas, which delivers further savings. Hence, the White House’s penchant for all things electric. In a recent interview, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stressed that families who buy EVs would, “never have to worry about gas prices again.” Perhaps. The ebb and flow of global oil production — and the ensuing impact on gas prices — admittedly matters little to EV users. Why should it? Foregoing gasoline affords the luxury of being unfazed by gasoline prices. In this regard, the Secretary isn’t wrong to tout EVs’ savings advantage. But his laser sharp focus on one type of saving should also be called out for what it truly is: a fiscal shell game that conveniently embraces one set of truths, while downplaying others.