The U.S. federal government has a huge car fleet which, in 2019, counted nearly 650,000 vehicles in total. Newly elected President Joe Biden plans to replace them all with electric vehicles.

The announcement was made as part of a press conference announcing the administration’s “Buy American” executive order. As the name suggests, the fleet will be replaced by EVs made in the States.

“The federal government also owns an enormous fleet of vehicles, which we’re going to replace with clean electric vehicles made right here in America, by American workers,” Biden said. “Together, this will be the largest mobilization of public investment in procurement, infrastructure and R&D since World War II.”

The details of the plan were not outlined. There is no timeline for the changeover yet, so the vehicles could simply be replaced by EVs as they age out, though buying in bulk would likely help savings. Who the government buys the vehicles from has not been revealed, either.

With a number of brands like Ford, GM, Rivian, Tesla, Lordstown, and even Volkswagen preparing their U.S. factories for local EV production, the government may soon be spoiled for choice. This will, of course, also be useful for automakers.

Fleet vehicles will be an important aspect of automakers’ efforts to amortize the expense of developing new EV platforms. GM, Rivian and Lordstown all have fleet vehicles in the works. It will be interesting to see if GM decides to move production of its Brightdrop van from Canada into the U.S. as a result of this decision.

President Biden added that requirements for more of the parts to be produced in America will be made stricter.

The government uses as many as 250,000 civilian vehicles, 225,000 post office vehicles, and 173,000 military vehicles. These traveled a combined 4.5 billion miles in 2019, so taking those emissions off the road will be a good thing.

The decision is also part of the Biden administration’s plan to add a million jobs in the automotive sector. The President said he wants to “position America to be the global leader in the manufacture of electric vehicles and their input materials and parts.”

This will also extend to infrastructure, as the President’s plan calls for an investment of billions in adding 550,000 EV charging stations throughout the U.S.