General Motors may have a slight problem in the near future regarding its affordable 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV. The reason the Bolt EV will be so affordable for so many is thanks to the United States’ federal tax credits amounting in $7,500, which drops the vehicle’s price tag to $29,995.
However, when this program was introduced, there was always a catch. After an automaker sells 200,000 electric vehicles, the tax credits will expire. That means the 2017 Bolt EV suddenly becomes $37,495, its actual MSRP.
The trouble comes with General Motors current estimations of how many PHEVs and EVs it has sold. According to The Detroit News, GM estimates around 110,000 vehicles (Chevrolet Volts, Spark EVs and Cadillac ELRs) have already qualified for the tax credits, which means 90,000 units remain for potential Chevrolet Bolt EV owners. At the same time, Bolt EV buyers won’t be the only ones taking advantage of the credits since the 2017 Chevrolet Volt will be on sale alongside it.
LG Chem, which is supplying many components for the Bolt EV, estimates 30,000 units will be sold in the vehicle’s first year on sale. If LG is right, that means there will be three years for GM to lobby for additional tax credits, assuming Bolt EV sales don’t exceed that figure.
Comments
This article, simplistic in the extreme, is wrong on so many of the numbers. The correct information is available at dozens of websites and in hundreds of articles.
Where is it wrong?
I have read all along each company got 200,000 rebates and that GM has been about half way there and that Tesla when ever they got the 3 Model in production only a few of their owners would get the rebate unless someone steps in and extends the rebates on the governments behalf.
What are the true numbers you have?
There’s a significant fade out period that gradually decreases the tax credit in the *second* quarter after the quarter in which they hit 200k. And noteably, the first quarter after 200k *still* gets the full credit.
So let’s say they hit 200k in 2017 Q2:
2017 Q2: full
2017 Q3: full
2017 Q4: half
2018 Q1: quarter
2018 Q2: nothing
I have read that Tesla Motors has sold more qualifying EVs than General Motors, so the new 2017 Chevy Bolt EV purchases will still get the full tax rebate for at least one more year.
Tesla Motors, on the other hand, is now offering the Model S 60/75 kWh version again at a discount, probably to compensate the Model 3 reservations. That means even model EVs will be sold, so the full tax rebate for that brand will be exhausted before 2018. Future Model 3 buyers will never get the full tax rebate.
I doubt the new Administration will extend or improve the tax rebate to a sale rebate. Thank the republicans for that EV future!
why should the govt be picking winners and losers with taxpayers money that only 1 or 2 % of the car buying public will benefit. a person buying a ZO-6 corvette is doing as much for the country by keeping workers at bowling green employed as someone buying a volt or bolt so why does not he get a tax rebate ???
Govt isn’t picking winners and losers. Any new technology takes time to mature. Ice technology is a century old while the battery technology for auto industry is a decade old. By giving the incentives, it is letting the technology evolve. The technology may fail to develop enough that it can’t survive without continuing subsidies in which case it will be shut down. If it turned out that electric car manufacturing can really be done economically over time, it is a major productivity boost for the country. You don’t need to haul gas to remote locations anymore. You don’t need to hunt for a gas station every week, energy sources for the cars will be plentiful, etc.
Fracking got subsidies are company r&d. Drug development gets subsidies. Lot of industry innovation gets subsidies. It is not picking winners and losers but incentivizing new technology.
Internet was a major government funded project. Without that finding, we would have the massive Internet based economy today.
giving tax breaks, the peoples tax money, to companies to do research is a lot different than giving to individuals who can afford a expensive new car. they are the winners and the taxpaying people are the looser
How does it compare to oil industry subsidies that benefit ICE owners far more?
There is one big difference to your comments. The giving subsides to industry for development and research is one thing and I agree it’s beneficial. The giving certain individual consumers a up front government subsidy to purchase a product is the BIG diffearence.
I don’t mind Tax credits for EV’S, but they should be for cars under $50k, currently rich folks get $7500 off their tax bill for buying very expensive EV’S, which hey can certainly afford without the tax credits.
While I don’t agree with your logic, I hope the republicans don’t extend the tax credits. This will benefit the Tesla in the long run. The other car makers won’t be able to match Tesla’s cost and scale. So cue the meanies, uneducated, auto dealers, and alt-right; and Cut, Cut, Cut! The Bolt is such a ugly car to waste $7,500 on. Trust me, Tesla will sell plenty of Model 3s without the Tax Credit.
I think it’s about time to get the taxpayers out of substidicing the electric car buyer. This tax and the lack of fuel road taxes has given these vehicles the time to be evaluated. The marketplace without substidicing is the testbed of the products value and need.
I agree and oil industry subsidies should go away too so nobody has an unfair advantage. When ICE owners pay as much for gasoline as people in Europe and Asia then we will have a level playing field.
a lot of people use oil products not just car owners like people who heat their homes. the Europe gasoline price has to do with taxes to fund the social programs not subsidies to the oil companies. same can be said for canada gasoline prices.
“When ICE owners pay as much for gasoline as people in Europe”, that’s to support Europe’s social spending, and since countries are so close they all must raise price to near levels to stop cross-border shopping.
The basic fact is the EV car is not to a point that they can not support themselves or the companies that make them. Tesla is not making money from the sale of cars. GM can afford to lose to establish a market and suppliers because they sell other cars.
This kick back was offered to the automakers to give them help in getting a EV markets established so they can meet the crazy mileage standards in the future. Development cost are not just high in this segment but made worse as they have no assured sales yet.
The rebates are much like the seed money the Government paid NASA to go to the moon. We did not go to the moon just to go we did it to learn how to get there and the many things we learned were applied elsewhere in the market and economy.
The #1 priority was national defense to learn about rockets for self defense. The second part was to spur technology that drove the economy. It is no coincidence that our economy has become stagnate once we stopped investing in NASA. China is now playing the cards we used to with space research and now are using them in new products for once they did not steal from us.
As it goes the rebates were a drop in the bucket if you look at all the real waste the government has been producing. There is a lot of areas that could be more easily cleaned up to help the tax payer.
Just look at how much the shovel ready jobs cost a few years ago and how little they contributed.
I could give or take on EV cars. I really don’t want one but I understand why they are going to be needed in the auto industry to survive. This is just part of it. It will be interesting to see how the present admin handles this moving forward.
I really think to make better batteries they should invest more into NASA as the space program has fed and kept more people alive and in contact with a much better standard of life than we would have been with out it. Hell none of us would be here complaining about it today if not for the NASA investments.
Obama was more interested social engineering than NASA engineering. if he was president back in kennedy’s time we would still not be in space. we went into space to outdo the Russians because we thought back then America was the greatest country on earth and this is not Obama’s opinion of the USA.
the world is moving to cleaner energy with or without america.
we could lead or we could hide behind walls.
this isn’t 1950s when the rest of the world was on its ass.
get smarter and compete or get left behind.
the road the future isn’t going to be paved with coal.
Yes I see it in India and China all the time. Well when it is clear.
The reality is America is one of the leaders in clean energy and we are paying for it with higher energy prices and often higher product prices because of all the investment.
Not saying it is a bad thing to be clean but you need to work the transition to where you do not lose jobs and increase prices to consumers vs. products coming from the fastest growing markets that do little to nothing.
Hell Youngstown Ohio and Akron Ohio have never been cleaner. But we also lost more jobs than you want to imagine.
The future is paved with a balanced approach of working to clean things up while still making use of the resources you have. Sorry but there is not enough windmills to replace our future needs and Solar if it were the simple easy answer it would not need government funding to support the industry that often loses companies even on the government dole.
One make problem is the many people who enter the clean energy field with only sights set on claiming government money and then disappearing into the night.
Some of these profiteers much like pirates and the come in take the money and then tell you how bad you are not for supporting them as they fly off in their Gulfstream. Like Mr Gore and the late Maurice Strong.
it has nothing to do with clean energy but it has to do with putting all these people out of work onto the govt tit and you have voter for life. it is all about remaining in power at the taxpayer expense but trump and the voters upset their apple cart.
It is called global economic redistribution.
Trump and the Brexit have upset the cart.
The plan is to make the strong weaker and the weak average and everyone dependent.
“the road the future isn’t going to be paved with coal”.
It is in China and India for the foreseable future. Yet hey NEVER get called out by greens, why is that?
We have no control over India or China. When they are choking (more) in smog, perhaps they’ll see the light like we did.
Or perhaps we’ll sell them prescription drugs and medical equipment to help treat the effects of the pollution.
They do get called by environmentalists. Go somewhere other than Faux news please.
when the best selling vehicles in the states are the F-100 and the Silverado it will be a long time before the EV even make a dent in the car market. the reason trump won the election people are tired of being told what to do and how to live their lives to please a small % of the population. if they want to save the planet they should be pushing birth control around the world as we have too many people after limited resorces.
Just so you know, the EV doesn’t have to fail for Trucks & SUVs to succeed. Republicans have turned into anti-capitalist and its not a good look. Look at how GM spends shareholders money lobbying against Tesla while at the same time releasing a Bolt Turd ?. And here’s the truth, GM & Ford make great Trucks and SUVs, but sh?tty EVs. To sum it up, in capitalist markets consumers vote with dollars, and Teslas’ sitting on $400mil in pre votes.