Yeah, dealer discounts are
Yeah, dealer discounts are tricky, but if the discount is big enough it can compensate for the cost of shipping the car across the country. I bought my last Volt in Wisconsin in wintertime, and even though it cost me $1,200 to ship it here, it was about $8,000 less than a comparable model cost here at the time. And discounts vary greatly from dealer to dealer as well. The HOV access situation here is indeed problematic. The goals were originally to reduce traffic congestion and reduce smog. But they recently made all earlier HOV stickers invalid, including the white HOV stickers (BEVs), so I believe that their longer term goals are to eventually change all of the HOV lanes into pay lanes, purely to make money rather than to solve our smog/congestion problems.