Oh Happy Day: Trump Kills Electric Vehicle Tax Credit Extension
From this article:
The oil industry, a staunch opponent of electric vehicles (EVs), received an early Christmas present from the White House as President Trump reportedly intervened to quash an EV tax credit expansion from inclusion in a government spending package.
The tax credit is meant to help offset the upfront cost of electric vehicles and boost the EV market. Consumers who purchase an EV can currently claim a credit up to $7,500, and the credit phases out once auto manufacturers sell 200,000 qualifying vehicles. Tesla and General Motors have both hit the 200,000-vehicle cap and had lobbied for an extension. A bipartisan proposal called for allowing a $7,000 credit for an additional 400,000 vehicles sold.
That proposal, introduced earlier this year as the Driving America Forward Act, was rolled into a broader package of incentives for renewable energy that proponents hoped to pass as part of an end-of-year spending deal. But groups tied to the Koch network and backed by oil industry funding worked hard to kill the clean energy incentives. These groups sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last week urging the Senate to oppose any bill that includes an EV tax credit extension.
Ultimately the EV provision was dropped from the spending package. According to Forbes, “In last-minute negotiations over a massive package of spending bills designed to avert a government shutdown, the EV provision was lost in the shuffle and that was the outcome Republicans and President Trump wanted.” Trump specifically pushed for excluding the EV tax credit, as Bloomberg reported.
At this point it’s clear: if our civilization ultimately works its way to sustainability and a planet that is no longer warming due to human activity, it will come as a result of our ridding ourselves of the entanglement with the oil industry. But how might that come about, given stories like the one above?
Well, one could offer, what about the will of the people?
Sorry, bad news: what the common American might happen to care about has precisely zero on our law-making processes. Anyone who thinks this is hyperbole is invited to look at the enactment of things for which there is near uniform public support, e.g., common sense gun laws.
OK, so how might that come about, given stories like the one above? I really have no idea.
Craig,
“I really have no idea”
How very accurate! How would this affect you ? It’s not as if you own an electric vehicle despite living in a state with very generous subsidies.
Obviously, the “will of the people” is reflected in sales of electric vehicles, and you are an excellent guide to the mind of the consumer.
The lack of success of EV adoption has nothing to do with either President trump or oil companies! (Exxon actually invented the lithium battery), but the lack of EV ESD capacity.
If the technology improves, the vehicles will sell without subsidy, if not subsidies are largely a waste of time and public money.