Tax Breaks For the Rich - 63 Percent of Electric Vehicle Tax Credits Applied To Luxury Vehicles In November

EV incentives are vital to the success of future EV adoption. First off, the notion of supporting the rich is incorrect. Battery powered cars are an emerging technology, and the automakers are paying billions of dollars, and often selling the cars at a loss. Tesla is just now starting to make a profit after 10 years of selling EVs, and many other automakers have been building EVs just as compliance cars to offset their sales of high profit, gas guzzling SUVs. The EV incentives do have an income cap of $150K a year for both federal and state incentives, and in California you cannot qualify for HOV (commuter lane) stickers if your income exceeds that number. The greatest effect of the EV incentives for ordinary people is for new car leases. That is why I leased my two Chevy Volts, which got me hooked on EVs. With the tax credit on a lease, the EV lease price is close to a conventional gas economy car. The Tesla Model 3 is comparable in price to a 3 Series or 5 Series BMW. Tesla has already sold over 200,000 EVs, so their Federal tax credit is half of what "late-entry" automakers are getting for their EVs, and it will phase down to zero unless the government grants an extension (doubtful). GM is also very near the end of their federal incentive subsidies, which I believe was the main reason why Chevy is killing the Volt, since they want to release new EVs and still qualify for EV incentives for the new models. The move towards EVs has been slow, but it is gathering momentum now, but new EV sales is still well under 2% of all vehicle sales! So incentive programs are critical to future adoption. Otherwise, as a country we are setting ourselves up for a huge failure in the same way that we did with the "oil crisis" in 1973, and then with the promotion of SUVs in the 80s and 90s, and the crash when gas prices went up afterwards. Right now the top selling vehicles in the U.S. are the Ford F150 and Chevy Silverado, but what do you think will happen if gas prices go back up to $5 a gallon+? Then everyone will be trying to unload their gas guzzlers to avoid spending $200+ a month to fill the tanks, and in the meantime Ford and GM are cutting their small car and sedan model lines, and a surge in gas prices will effectively give that whole market over to the Japanese and European automakers. So what is smarter for today? Charging a little less in taxes to people who are investing in the country's energy independent future? Or limiting the support and appeal to potential EV buyers, and paying 1000 times more (as a country) in the long run?

Those EV tax credits are passed on to used car consumers. Therefor there are a lot of excellent bargains to be had for 2015 Nissan LEAFs or 2014 Chevy Volts. One thing people have learned about EVs is that if you can use the car in the 20-80% charge range 95% of your time, the daily charge, then the EV battery will last 2x to 4x the battery warranty period. Save the 100% charge level for those trips out of town or for those extra errands. IF you select an EV that has twice the range of your daily commute you should have plenty of juice for AC, Heat, extra errands and you will be a happy camper. Many people who have bought a EV for a commute that is 95% of the EVs stated range are quickly disappointed and wind up blaming the car. IF you are a multicar family and one of your cars is not already an EV OMG you need to check them out. You can save a lot of money if you have a suitable EV for your commute.

You are right John. I was thinking about our California state EV incentives. Both on purchase and the commuter lane access, which are restricted by income. The federal incentives are qualified by the car, and not the buyer. Regarding the Tesla Federal Tax Credit, it shows: For Vehicles Delivered
$7,500 On or before December 31, 2018
$3,750 January 1 to June 30, 2019
$1,875 July 1 to December 31, 2019
Also I see federal EV incentives to be like home solar panel installation incentives, or having incentives to add energy efficient windows, heating and lights in homes. You could say that these rebates pay the rich for updating their homes, but the truth is that in the absence of outside financial benefits and incentives many people (rich or poor) will not adopt new technologies. But having competition to older established technologies breeds innovation, and you can easily see that EV incentives helped Tesla, Chevy, and Nissan create real production EVs. And further, you can see how the success of EVs have caused most all automakers around the world to create their own competing EVs for sale, whereas 10 years ago (or even 5 years ago) most major automakers only considered EVs a tiny niche/experimental market, like fuel cell cars are today. Historically though it was NOT just GM who actually killed the electric car 20 years ago. It was government mandates for cleaner, more efficient cars in the 80's that caused automakers to look at building electric cars, and GM created the EV-1 test cars to see how electric and fuel cell cars would work in the real world. But then when it looked like they could be successful, reports were released to the press stating that the EV-1's would cost $100,000 each to build, and that surveys of potential buyers came out which said that an electric car would need to cost $28,000 LESS than a gas car for buyers to be interested in owning one. Which has shown to be ridiculous over time. And now oil-company paid politicians are saying that our tax dollars are helping rich people buy EV luxury cars. But it does not face the fact that the real issue is that GM makes $54,000 profit on each Cadillac Escalade sold (which averages around 16MPG), and they are cutting the Chevy Cruze and Volt PHEV. If you want to know the truth of the situation it is always good to see who is getting rich now by cutting EV incentives.

Tesla Model 3 "sales" for last month were not really sales, but deliveries for cars that were bought months and mostly years ago. Let's see how many Model 3 cars get sold when the waiting list is exhausted and additional competitors arrive , all with intrinsic $7500 price advantages, thanks to the tax credits.