Did the "big bill" just end EV Tax Credits for Slates?

[Benjamin Nead]

I though we were talking about a cheap EV truck for a moment. Guess not.

The topic of this particular thread refers to federal legislation that's attempting to make these cheap electric trucks more expensive.

 

[sodamo]

The topic of this particular thread refers to federal legislation that attempting to make these cheap electric trucks more expensive.

not being political, but I disagree. price of the truck should be price of the truck, just like any item. Here we are discussing who is paying for it. Manufacturers should be setting fair market value, not base on arbitrary incentives.
i could have bought one of the current EV trucks last year and maybe gotten the incentive, but I did’t. Not interested in the offerings. Slate at the suggested $$ appeals to me. Yes, I know those $$ aren’t exact yet. Of course neither is the truck and should Slate follow the lead of current manufacturer I will lose interest, incentive or not.

 

[1yeliab_sufur1]

not being political, but I disagree. price of the truck should be price of the truck, just like any item. Here we are discussing who is paying for it. Manufacturers should be setting fair market value, not base on arbitrary incentives.
i could have bought one of the current EV trucks last year and maybe gotten the incentive, but I did’t. Not interested in the offerings. Slate at the suggested $$ appeals to me. Yes, I know those $$ aren’t exact yet. Of course neither is the truck and should Slate follow the lead of current manufacturer I will lose interest, incentive or not.

yah that is true they do say they are not like other car makers in there business model

 

[Benjamin Nead]

Correct me if wrong, but I don’t recall going from incandescent to LED. I believe there was a step in between, CFL. I just installed some new LED fixtures and they sure aren’t was what available when incandescents were banned.
There was also a secondary benefit to incandescents, but likely not appreciated in some climates.

There was even an interim technology, called cold cathode florescent (CCFL.) These had similar efficiency to LED but were cheaper, maybe around $20 each when LEDs were still fetching $30 or $40. Because they put off less heat, they could make the bulb out of clear plastic instead of glass (less chance of shattering when dropped.) You didn't typically see these in hardware stores, but in online lighting specialty stores.

I still have a few of them. The lower Kelvin temperature ones had a rather unusual pinkish-purple glow to them that I'm sure some found unnerving. Cheaply made LED bulbs of the day were also known to have a greenish glow to them. We now have dirt cheap LED bulbs that glow the "correct" or "natural" color and last for many years.

 

[Benjamin Nead]

not being political, but I disagree. price of the truck should be price of the truck, just like any item. Here we are discussing who is paying for it. Manufacturers should be setting fair market value, not base on arbitrary incentives.
i could have bought one of the current EV trucks last year and maybe gotten the incentive, but I did’t. Not interested in the offerings. Slate at the suggested $$ appeals to me. Yes, I know those $$ aren’t exact yet. Of course neither is the truck and should Slate follow the lead of current manufacturer I will lose interest, incentive or not.

All that would be fine and well if fossil fuels themselves weren't so heavily subsidized . . . and that this legislation also didn't go after the domestic manufacturing of solar, batteries and the like with such a vengeance. It's all very stupid and short-sighted at this point.

I don't have an ideological purity test so refined that I would say we should never have subsidies in place to advance new technologies. A careful review of history will indicate we've done it with just about everything at one point or another, typically to the betterment of our lives and the establishment or reinvention of home-based manufacturing.

Government isn't a business. It's a service. Subsidies are there to jump start new business ideas in the private sector and then are designed to fade or "get out of the way" eventually. The original 2007 to 2022 EV tax credit capped 200,000 units per manufacturer. What it ended up doing, unfortunately, was to penalize manufacturers who were early to the market with their EVs and sold a lot, because they were better cars than what the other guy was making. So, yes, subsidies can hurt business if they were designed poorly from the start or can't be revised along the way.

Biden era EV subsidies (Build Back Better through the Inflation Reduction Act) set a timeline for these subsides to fade out for all manufacturers by 2030. That was a better plan than the old one. At first, there were also provision for union manufacturing. Elon, of course, hated that, because Tesla is famously non-union. So those got dropped. There were always provisions for more domestic manufacturing over importing. I don't think that was a bad thing, since it encouraged new investment and new hiring on these shores. That's what ended up getting passed in late 2022. I think it was something good for both the industry and the consumer, while keeping us competitive with the rest of the world. With some tweeking here and there over the upcoming years, it should have simply been allowed to run its course and expired on time in 2030.

So, yes, I'll ask again . . . after more than a century of doing so, why are we still subsidizing the fossil fuel industry? Where's your outrage there? If a gasoline car was still cheaper to buy (compared to an EV) but the fuel was not just twice as expensive but, instead, 4 TIMES AS EXPENSIVE as comparable units of electricity, what do you think would happen to the gasoline vehicle market at that point?

 

[sodamo]

Well, perhaps because whether directly or indirectly, fossil fuels subsidies affect everyone, acknowledged or not, even you.

 

[Karl Childers]

I just saw this part of the bill, buying a U.S. made vehicle. Might take away some of the sting if EV credits go away.

 

[Letas]

For those of us considering financing instead of paying cash for your new Slate, here is another incentive currently included in the big, beautiful bill...

"Provide deduction of up to $10,000 for loan interest on new vehicles that undergo final assembly in the U.S. For tax years 2025-2028."

So, if the bill passes and you take delivery in 2027, appears you can write off the interest on the loan for 2 years. That's not bad considering the first two years of an auto loan are heavily biased towards interest and very little is applied to the principal.

Assuming the ev credit no longer applies (a safe bet) and you finance the entire amount with tax ($30K) @ 7% the interest paid in the first 24 months is $3,280 that can be written off your taxes. Not too shabby.

Deduction, not credit.
More like a $900 savings.

$7500>$900