(About damn time. Hopefully the federal government will no longer screw me to keep the EV auto business afloat.)
The One Big Beautiful Bill did away with the federal (Biden-era) electric vehicle (EV) subsidy, which expired on October 1st.
The Biden administration $7,500 tax subsidy for purchasing electric vehicles, which helped propel a boom in battery electric vehicles (EVs), expired effective October 1st pursuant to the Big Beautiful Bill.
Despite the expiration of the federal support for EVs, Inside EVs reports that “a small number of U.S. states will continue to offer their own regional tax credits, rebates, and incentives, allowing their residents to continue offsetting the high cost of EVs compared to gasoline vehicles.”
That's an unmitigated good thing. If something needs subsidizing to sell, it never should have been on the market in the first place. It's not the role of government to pick winners and losers in the marketplace, and yet that's precisely what these EV subsidies did - along with allowing the pretentious "green" crowd to ballyhoo their "emissions-free" vehicles, which of course, are powered by electricity still overwhelmingly generated with coal and natural gas.
It's virtue-signaling of the most hypocritical sort.
Some states are upping the ante. Blue states, of course. Colorado is increasing their EV subsidy from $6,000 to $9,000 for a pure EV, and from $4,000 to $6,000 for a plug-in hybrid. One recent report states that 14 states still maintain EV subsidies, including Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma (!), Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia. California, surprisingly, let its program expire, although Governor Gavin "A Little Dab'll Do Ya" Newsom reportedly isn't happy about that. These are, with the exception of Oklahoma, blue states, which should come as no surprise.
The government subsidies for EVs and their related infrastructure have been utter failures from the very start. The least competent Transportation Secretary in history, "Pothole Pete" Buttigieg, oversaw the infamous $19.5 million EV chargers. The federal subsidy poured money into vehicles that were all too often bought by well-off, virtue-signaling leftists - although not all. EVs do make sense for some people. Our youngest kid has a Ford Fusion plug-in hybrid, and since her daily commute is under ten miles and she rarely drives farther than the 15-mile trip to see her grandparents, that works out great for her. But it was her choice. Her decision. No subsidy - she bought it used.
But it's not the government's role to put its thumb on the scale of that decision-making process. It's a good thing that this stupid idea has ended.
It will be back in the next funding bill................................
ReplyDeleteWe'll see. I think the days of EV/Wind/Solar/EcoGreen scam are starting to wither all over.
DeleteIIRC, in Texas there is a $200/year fee to register an ev on top of the normal registration fee. In the first year of registration the $200 fee must be paid for the current and nex year all at once.
ReplyDeleteThat's funny as heck ... unless you have an EV you want to register. I'll never have to worry about that.
Delete$200 to help pay for the ecological disasters when EV's burn?
DeleteThat seems fair...