The 46th President of the United States is a noted revhead – but his new passion is electric cars.
Biden recently found himself being interviewed by Daniel Mac – a social media star who’s become famous for his candid clips where he runs up to people in nice cars and asks them “what do you do for a living?” – while test-driving Cadillac Lyriq, the iconic American brand’s first fully-electric production car, at the Detroit Auto Show.
‘Uncle Joe’ rather humbly describes his job as “being married to Jill Biden” in the video, and uses the video to spruik his electrification policy, saying he wants to “make sure we’re making a lot more electric vehicles in America”.
The sleek Caddy is a far cry from the heavily-armoured custom Cadillac limousine known as ‘The Beast’ that typically ferries around US Presidents. Indeed, the fact that Biden was even allowed to drive the car was rather surprising: normally, the POTUS isn’t allowed to drive a car whilst in office as it’s a safety risk.
WATCH Joe Biden meet Daniel Mac below.
Biden is a noted car guy. Indeed, his prize possession is a green over tan 1967 Corvette Stingray convertible that he received as a wedding present from his father, who owned a car dealership back in the day.
RELATED: Joe Biden’s Classic Corvette Is Undrivable
Lately, however, he’s been all about EVs. As part of a broader suite of environmental policies, the Biden Administration is pushing to have 50% of all vehicles sold in the US to be electric by 2030 and has introduced a variety of policies meant to stimulate American EV production.
Earlier this week, Biden announced he was earmarking US$7.5 billion to build a nationwide network of 500,000 EV chargers and has previously expressed plans to replace the US government’s fleet of cars and trucks with locally-assembled electric vehicles, for example.
Biden estimated his administration is investing a total of $135 billion “to advance America’s electric vehicle future” between all the legislation passed this year, saying “I believe we can own the future of manufacturing… American manufacturing is back, Detroit is back, America’s back.”
He’s expressed that the advancements in EVs give him a “sense of optimism… Although I like the speed, too,” he was quick to add.
He’s also said that he’ll be the first in line to buy the fully-electric Corvette when it hits the market in 2035. Hopefully he’s still around by then…
Read Next