With Millions Still Out of Work, We Need Biden’s American Jobs Plan
Originally published on the NRDC Expert Blog.
By Mitchell Bernard
Today’s unemployment numbers out of Washington affirm what the country’s experiencing on Main Street: a grinding climb from a devastating pandemic that’s taking a continuing toll on the economic security of our people. It’s great news that unemployment is falling. But 9.3 million Americans remain out of work.
President Biden has proposed the right remedy — the American Jobs Plan, a comprehensive package of strategic public investment that weds climate action to equitable recovery and puts people back to work in every community.
This is a bold vision for strong, lasting, and broad-based recovery. It sets the table for a generation of prosperity and progress. It means cleaner, healthier communities, both urban and rural. As the plan makes its way through Congress, it’s time for all of us to rally around it.
The American Jobs Plan is a stirring vote of confidence in the nation’s future. It’s built on the belief that U.S. workers can out-compete anyone in the world when given a fighting chance. That’s what this plan does.
It sets us on the path to 100 percent clean electricity by 2035 — wiping out nearly a third of the dangerous carbon pollution that’s driving the climate crisis — by helping to clean up the nation’s power sector.
It speeds the transition to electric cars and trucks with zero tailpipe emissions, expands sustainable transit options for those who need them most, and reconnects urban neighborhoods divided for decades by misguided highway routes.
It protects our communities from the risks and toxic pollution from more than 3.1 million abandoned oil and gas wells and coal mines, by capping and cleaning up these idled fossil fuel sites as we shift to cleaner, smarter ways to power our future.
And it ends the ongoing and unacceptable exposure to hazardous drinking water in as many as 10 million American homes, by replacing lead pipes and service lines with safe and modern alternatives, while upgrading wastewater, drinking water, and stormwater systems nationwide.
These are essential national priorities. Cleaning up our dirty cars, trucks, and power plants. Capping abandoned wells and mines. Getting the lead out of our drinking water.
Combined with other vital work, such as rebuilding aging bridges, roads, and ports, this investment will create or sustain 15 million jobs over the coming decade, a Georgetown University analysis shows, including 8 million for workers that require only a high school education or less.
These are good-paying jobs for welders, carpenters, truck drivers, electricians, steelworkers, and others, including those who want the collective bargaining opportunities that come from belonging to a union.
The clean energy sector offers multiple advantages: It pays 25 percent more than the average job for some 3 million workers who help to make our homes, cars, and workplaces more efficient; it builds electric and low-emission cars, trucks, and parts; it gets more clean power from the wind and sun; and it modernizes the grid and storage system we depend on for reliable power.
That’s core work in the American Jobs Plan. It’s how we roll up our sleeves and make good on Biden’s pledge to cut the U.S. carbon footprint in half by 2030, so we can stop adding carbon pollution to the atmosphere altogether by 2050.
That’s what the science tells us must happen — at home and abroad — if we’re to avert the worst of a climate crisis that last year alone inflicted more than $95 billion in damage nationwide, while combining with fossil fuel pollution to impose another $820 billion in health-care costs on our people.
Confronting this costly crisis will be the economic play of our lifetime, with clean energy investments set to attract more than $11 trillion in global capital in the space of this generation alone.
The American Jobs Plan will help make the United States a clean energy superpower — and make U.S. companies and workers the winners in the global clean energy sweepstakes.
The plan includes investments to plus-up research and investment in critical new technologies; support innovation to make U.S. factories more efficient; strengthen the domestic supply chain for the next generation of wind, solar, and battery technology; and expand training for workers looking to transition out of fading industries like fossil fuels and into more promising opportunities elsewhere.
Strengthening our economy. Putting our people back to work. Cleaning up toxic pollution that threatens our health. Standing up to the mounting costs and growing dangers of climate change.
These are the pillars of the American Jobs Plan — strategic investment that’s paid for by asking fossil fuel companies, other corporations, and those earning more than $400,000 a year to pay their fair share to support the kind of progress that’s enabled them to thrive. Investing in efficiency, meanwhile, will enable us to do more with less waste in our homes, workplaces and cars, cutting energy costs for our families and businesses.
Small wonder, then, that the plan is supported by nearly two-thirds of the country.
The American Jobs Plan accomplishes one thing more: It addresses what the pandemic has made all the more urgent.
A modern plague that has killed 600,000 people across the United States alone, the coronavirus pandemic has upended the lives of us all. No one is surprised to learn who’s suffered most: primarily the same low-income communities and people of color for whom the pandemic has only worsened long-festering inequities in education and employment opportunities, housing, and health care.
The American Jobs Plan is designed to address those inequities head-on. It’s tailored to deliver 40 percent of the economic, environmental, and health benefits of this strategic climate and clean energy investment to the same historically disadvantaged communities that bear a disproportionate share of the burden of environmental hazard and harm.
The American Jobs Plan is the grand strategy the country needs — and we need it now. The 2022 federal budget Biden proposed last week includes a down payment on this eight-year investment plan, with early investment to jump-start the progress it’s meant to ensure.
Now, it’s our turn to rally around this hopeful vision of a cleaner, healthier, more prosperous future for a nation united behind the climate action that can power a strong, just, and equitable recovery for every family, in every community, across this land.
Former Jeep brand CEO Antonio Filosa, now head of Stellantis, took a shot at BYD over EV sales. BYD responded with the perfect comeback.
Stellantis and BYD trade shots over German EV sales
So, who really sold more electric vehicles? Stellantis’ CEO claimed that its joint venture, Leapmotor, outsold BYD in the heart of Europe during an investor conference last week.
“Last month, I believe that Leapmotor sold more BEVs than BYD in Germany,” Filosa said at the event. BYD wasted no time, responding in a press release issued on Friday.
BYD fired back, saying it registered 8,610 vehicles in Germany in the first eight months of 2025, more than double Leapmotor’s 3,536.
After checking official data from the German Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA), BYD registered 8,563 passenger vehicles through August, compared to Leapmotor with 3,531. Broken down by powertrain, BYD registered 5,809 all-electric vehicles (EVs) and 2,844 plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), compared to Leapmotor’s 3,083 EVs and 448 PHEVs.
BYD also boasted that it outsold Alfa Romeo and nearly Jeep, two other Stellantis-owned brands, during the same period.
Alfa Romeo registered 5,222 vehicles through August, while Jeep had 8,884, barely beating out BYD. However, Jeep only sold 350 EVs and 569 PHEVs during the period. Alfa Romeo sold just 140 all-electric vehicles.
A Stellantis spokesperson clarified (via Bloomberg) that Filosa’s comments “referred only to the month of August, when Leapmotor was indeed the first Chinese brand in the country, with the highest number of battery-electric vehicle registrations and market share.” But was it really? Not according to KBA data.
Electrek’s Take
It looks like Filosa was referring to just one model, the Leapmotor T03, which was the top-selling EV in Germany last month.
Either way, taking a jab at BYD, which is quickly gaining market share not just in Europe, but in nearly all global markets (outside of the US), is bold.
It will be interesting to see how sales shape up at the end of the year in Germany and overall Europe. Both BYD and Leapmotor are expanding with new models launching, including entry-level EVs like the Dolphin Surf (BYD) and Leapmotor B05.
Source: Bloomberg, KBA
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Finnish equipment brand Avant Techno Oy is making their biggest push yet into the electric wheel loader market with the launch of the all-new Avant e747, packing a 47 kWh battery and serious, diesel-beating performance.
Since its founding in 1991, Finnish firm Avant Techno Oy has been working to make a name for themselves in the heavy equipment space with a line of articulated compact loaders (mostly diesel-powered). After releasing their first electric e5 and e6 options back in 2016, they’ve made some inroads, but the latest e727 and e747 models show a renewed, more concerted effort to break into the equipment space in a big way.
Avant’s new e747 is Avant’s biggest electric wheel loader to date, too, offering up to nine hours of continuous operation from its efficient, 47 kWh (51V) battery pack.
That battery isn’t just efficient, it’s unique. Developed in-house by Avant and marketed under the Avant Power brand, the e747’s 47 kWh pack uses “OptiTemp” immersion cooling, submerging the battery’s cells in a dielectric fluid that keeps temperatures stable (read: optimized) under even the heaviest load demands. The result is a bespoke battery pack that runs cooler, charges more efficiently, and maintains consistent output even during long, demanding shifts. 10-80% recharging is possible in under two hours on a 22 kW DC charger.
Avant believes that technology will give its machines a crucial edge in a broader market that expects their wheel loaders to work at full power, all day long.
“The market has still been missing heavy-duty electric loaders with greater lifting power, longer range, faster drive speed, bigger battery capacity and energy efficiency,” explains Tuomas Färlin, Commercial Product and Sales manager at Avant Tecno Oy. “[With this new battery] Avant e747 is ideal for various professional uses. Think construction or demolition sites where raw power and durability are necessities. Or property maintenance work, where you need a compact, effective and agile loader for full workdays.”
The e747 sends power from its battery to four electric drive motors, one to each wheel, and to the auxiliary hydraulics, which are separate from the drive system. And, because each drive motor is controlled individually, traction control is precise and movement is smooth and predictable on all surfaces.
Avant says that series production for both versions of its e700-series electric wheel loaders will begin in Q1 of next year. No word, yet, on pricing.
Electrek’s Take
Other electric wheel loader makers like Case, Liebherr, and Volvo are obviously feeling the heat from Asian brands like XCMG and LiuGong — knowing the competition is heating up even among other European brands is sure to keep the pressure on. Here’s hoping everything they say about competition improving the breed is true!
SOURCE | IMAGES: Avant, via Equipment Journal.
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Six months after announcing plans to begin EV production in Europe with the help of contract manufacturer Magna Steyr, XPeng Motors has begun rolling two initial all-electric models off those assembly lines overseas. The Chinese automaker continues to deepen its presence in the EU to gain a larger market share.
While XPeng Motors remains one of the more popular Chinese BEV brands in its native country, the company has continued to expand to new markets over the last half-decade or so. We’ve extensively covered XPeng’s expansion into Europe, where it now sells its EVs in 12 different countries in the region, including the Netherlands where we have test driven several of its models.
As you may recall, the EU implemented a probe into the Chinese automakers that the European Commission believes had been “unfairly” subsidized as exports into the region by the boatload. To combat this alleged advantage, Europe imposed tariffs on imports of EVs built in China, including marques like NIO, BYD, and XPeng.
That has not deterred Chinese automakers, who continue to import from China by the boatload while setting up local production to alleviate some of those duties. In May 2024, we reported that Magna Steyr’s president confirmed nearly every Chinese EV automaker, including XPeng Motors, had been in touch with the contract manufacturer about localized EV production in Europe.
This past March, the Austrian production arm of Magna International confirmed it was finalizing two EV assembly contracts with two Chinese brands – XPeng and GAC Group, which could begin as early as June. Today, six months after those reports arose, XPeng has confirmed EV production is underway in Europe at Magna Steyr.
XPeng begins assembling two EVs in Europe via Magna
In a Weibo post earlier today, XPeng confirmed the start of EV production in Europe, confirming that its G6 and G9 models have begun rolling off Magna Steyr’s assembly lines in Graz, Austria.
As you may recall, Magna Steyr was once home to production of the short-lived Fisker Ocean SUV and the Jaguar I-Pace, which has also been discontinued (although Jaguar isn’t bankrupt like Fisker). That left plenty of production space for Magna to fill, hence why so many Chinese automakers inquired.
This is a win-win for both Magna and XPeng. The former finds a potential long-term contract partner (more on that in a second). At the same time, the latter finally establishes localized EV production in Europe, avoiding most of the tariffs imposed by the EU.
The initial report out of Austria in March stated that both XPeng and GAC were planning to utilize a Semi-Knocked-Down (SKD) build process, in which pre-fabricated components are imported from China into Austria before being assembled locally at Magna Steyr.
The report also stated that the Chinese Automakers were initially only investing a minimal amount of funds into a small number of EV assemblies in order to test markets in Europe. Given XPeng’s growing presence overseas and today’s Weibo post, it has found a viable EV production solution in Magna and is already preparing for further expansions to secure more of Europe’s automotive market. Per the post (translated from Chinese):
In Q3 2025, Xpeng Motors officially launched its first localized production project in Europe at the Magna plant in Graz, Austria, with the first batch of the Xpeng G6 and G9 vehicles rolling off the production line. The plant will also produce more Xpeng models in the future. Xpeng Motors is deepening its presence in the European market with a richer product offering, continuing to accelerate its globalization journey with ‘Made in China’ technology.
There is no word yet on what other XPeng EVs may eventually be assembled in Europe, but I could see the new P7 making its way to Austria next. We will see!
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