Hooray for electric vehicles. Someday, they’re going to help slash carbon emissions and get global warming under control.

Getting there, however, is not likely to be an effortless glide on gleaming blacktop. This is going to be a bumpy road, and the faster we go, the bumpier it’s going to get. Get ready to surround yourself with airbags. And get a helmet, maybe.

The Biden administration is reportedly set to boost fuel-efficiency standards in a way meant to dramatically speed the adoption of electric vehicles, or EVs. The New York Times reports that the goal is to boost EVs from less than 6% of new-car purchases today to nearly 70% by 2032.

One way to do that through regulatory power would be to crank up the fuel-efficiency standards automakers must meet. The current rules require automakers to average 49 miles per gallon (MPG) per vehicle, across their fleets, by 2026. Raising that to 60 or even 70 MPG would leave no choice but to rapidly roll out EVs. The Environmental Protection Agency is due to spell out its approach on April 12.

The key fact here is that it’s nearly impossible to make gasoline-powered cars more efficient than they already are. After 100-plus years of innovation on the internal-combustion engine, we’re far down the curve of diminishing returns.

But EVs are a step-change in efficiency, at least the way the government measures it. Most EVs average more than 100 MPG-equivalent, a measure that equates electrical power with what a gas engine produces. The thrifty Honda Civic, by contrast, averages just 35 MPG. So if Honda built more gas-powered Civics, it would actually harm the automaker’s fleet-wide fuel-economy. More hybrids, with both a gas engine and a battery, would barely help. The only way to reach a lofty new federal MPG requirement will be with electrics.

[Drop Rick Newman a note, follow him on Twitter, or sign up for his newsletter.]

The goal is laudable. The implementation, however, could be a multi-car pileup. It’s hard to think of an era of forced technology adoption anything like what Biden supposedly has in mind. The government has been tightening fuel-economy standards since the 1970s, but that has largely been a gradual process. Even then, unintended consequences have caused unforeseen problems.