Senator Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., emphasized her criticism of new federal standards to crack down on emissions from gasoline-powered cars and trucks while boosting production of electric vehicles over the next few years.

Federal officials called the new automobile emissions standards the most ambitious plan yet to curtail pollution from cars.

Capito would like to hit the brakes.

“Since when is the federal government telling us what we can and cannot buy in terms of our vehicles?” Capito said during a briefing with West Virginia reporters. “It’s obviously a green push again here — very political, I think, and unrealistic.”

The Environmental Protection Agency rule announced Wednesday would aim for dramatically boosting electric vehicle sales past 2030. The policy pushes to significantly cut carbon emissions from passenger cars and light trucks.

The EPA estimates the final rule will prevent 7.2 billion metric tons of carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere through 2055.

“With transportation as the largest source of U.S. climate emissions, these strongest-ever pollution standards for cars solidify America’s leadership in building a clean transportation future and creating good-paying American jobs, all while advancing President Biden’s historic climate agenda,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said.

West Virginia officials, including Capito, were critical of expanding the government’s role in vehicle markets — and described the federal goals as unrealistic.

“The EVs that were sold last year — 7.6 percent nationwide, half of those in California. And West Virginia alone — the new vehicles sold that were electric, strictly electric: 1.1 percent. Yet we’re going to get to 70 percent in eight years. That’s laughable,” Capito said.

Capito also questioned how an ambitious pace of electric vehicle expansion could square with strains on the nation’s power grid. She called that “unsustainable.”

“It’s really sort of unbelievable how on the one hand they can say ‘You need to have all these EVs’ and on the other hand they can say ‘We don’t have the power. Make sure you don’t turn your heat on during the day’ and all of these kinds of things that have gone on from time to time,” she said.

Senator Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., also expressed criticism of the EPA rule in a statement this week.

“The federal government has no authority and no right to mandate what type of car or truck Americans can purchase for their everyday lives,” Manchin stated.

“This reckless and ill-informed rule will impose what is effectively an EV mandate without ensuring the security of our supply chains from nations like China and without a realistic transition plan that addresses our domestic infrastructure needs.”

Congressman Alex Mooney, a Republican candidate for Senate, also knocked the EPA rule.

“President Joe Biden’s radical EPA is at it again,” Mooney said, adding that the “announcement of new tailpipe emission standards is death by regulation for gas-powered cars.

“West Virginians love to drive and are dependent on gas powered vehicles to navigate our great state. President Biden continues to act as a dictator — forcing an extreme left-wing mandate by executive fiat. I will oppose any effort by the Biden Administration to morph our country into a socialist utopia of overregulation run by nameless bureaucrats in Washington.”

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Republican candidate for governor, also distributed a statement that was critical of the federal standard, describing “radical EV policies.”

“This is an attack on rural America and rural Americans who are working really hard to make ends meet who are going to get bludgeoned by this rule,” Morrisey stated.

“And this comes in a time when the Biden administration is plotting to destroy whatever is left of our energy production through regulations that would effectively shut down coal- and gas-fired power plants—the backbone of the nation’s power generation.”