Battery-powered vehicles are considered essential to the fight against climate change, but most models are aimed at the affluent. Ford has stopped taking orders for Lightning electric pickups, with a theoretical starting price of about $40,000, because it can’t make them fast enough.Credit…Sylvia Jarrus for The New York Times Policymakers in Washington are promoting electric vehicles as a solution to climate change. But an uncomfortable truth remains: Battery-powered cars are much too expensive for a vast majority of Americans. Congress has begun trying to address that problem. The climate and energy package passed on Sunday by the Senate , the Inflation Reduction Act, would give buyers of used electric cars a tax credit. But automakers have complained that the credit would apply to only a narrow slice of vehicles, at least initially, largely because of domestic sourcing requirements. And experts say broader steps are needed to make electric cars […]