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California Could Increase Electric-Car Subsidy To $4,500

Tesla became the first automaker to enter the sunset period for its federal electric-car tax credits, and General Motors is closing in quickly, too. To provide somewhat of a buffer, California is now weighing a $2,000 increase to its electric-car subsidy.

Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that the increase is specifically meant to offset the loss of federal tax credits for some automakers. All automakers qualify for up to $7,500 in tax credits for electric-car buyers. However, once the automaker sells 200,000 qualifying vehicles, the credits enter a phase-out period until they’re reduced to $0. For Tesla, that will be mid-2019. It’s unclear how close GM is, but the automaker has called on the government to raise the limit and extend the credits in the past.

2019 Chevrolet Bolt EV - Exterior - First Drive - September 2018 006

California currently offers an additional $2,500 rebate for electric-car buyers, and the increase would bring the full rebate to $4,500. According to the report, the state plans on funding the additional $2,000 per electric vehicle with monies from the Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Companies in the state must purchase credits to comply with the regulation. The extra incentive could also be applied at the time of sale, rather than a mail-in rebate like the program operates now.

Right now, the $2,500 state incentive comes from another state-run program: the cap-and-trade program for reducing carbon-dioxide emissions. Companies must also purchase credits to comply with this regulation as well.

2019 Chevrolet Volt - Exterior - First Drive - September 2018 006

As for the federal tax credits, legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives to lift the 200,000-unit cap. The pending bill would also apply the up-to-$7,500 credit at the point of sale and not provide the funds at tax time.

Should nothing change, and it’s quite likely that will be the case, GM will face marketing its first mainstream electric car, the Chevrolet Bolt EV, with a full MSRP of $37,495. With the credits, the car costs under $30,000.

Former GM Authority staff writer.

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Comments

  1. There is nothing California knows more than how to blow away there citizens money and future…

    California is bankrupt in so many ways…

    – economically the state failing and they have record deficits and debt

    – Taxes are out of control as they dream up another way to spend hard-working citizen tax money

    – Californians are leaving the state in droves for states like Texas, Arizona, and others…where the economy is actually going up and crime levels are lower.

    – San Francisco is covered in feces and homelessness

    – Northern California is hated by Southern California and the interior; California in general is despised by most Americans in general

    – Criminal like Dianne Feinstein and Moonbeam

    – Hollyweird…

    …And it is the most morally corrupt cesspool of homelessness, crime, and debauchery American has ever seen.

    But, hey, throw away a couple of more billion dollars and the place will be perfect….Fairy dust does the trick!

    Reply
    1. I agree, spent 5 days on a business trip in NoCal and Sacremento last month. Absolutely a freakin dump.

      I am sure handing out money to friend in the electric car scam (Elon, how is that tent in California and now SEC investigation working out for ya?) business will do the trick. Just add a few more billion to the deficit and up taxes. Genius!

      Reply
      1. Sounds like desperation trying to save a failing Tesla which just happens to be in California and in bed with its politicians. Already almost a billion dollars in American tax money has been blown on Tesla. Why not waste a little more…they will just print more!

        Reply
  2. Meanwhile, TESLA stock is collapsing in trading today………………

    Reply
  3. Make America Great Again – but not California! California isn’t America. California is a worse enemy than Russia, who isn’t an enemy at all. California wants to take everything away from America, and Russia wants to give America everything it wants! We should just give California back to Mexico (after all, that’s the international law right now, James Polk never ratified its seizure), so it would be so easy to just build that wall between California and Arizona as it would to build it to San Diego, right? If y’all hate California so much, then LOSE IT! Stop saying “I hate California, but it has to stay in America so I can keep hating it!” So stupid it’s obviously stupid.

    Go see SmartAsset dot com, and see how state-debt calculations are made. Rich states with high mortgages automatically go high on the debt-calculations. So who is the least debted state? West Virginia. I don’t see folks here calling WV a place where they want to live. So instead, let’s look at the state with the most UNRECOVERABLE debt, not mortgages (which are assets, not liabilities). The Geebus freaks in Colorado win the actual money-losing debt race, because their debts are mostly car-loans! Yup, the idiots in super-red Colorado owe the most money that they will never be able to recover. Californians can recover their debt any time they want to sell their house. Houses in Sacramento have increased their value around 35% in the last 2 years. Nowhere else in America has that positive stat. Read it and weep, or you could always trigger and call me an insult to avoid the facts you refuse to read.

    Who’s the stupid state now?

    Reply
    1. When are you right wingnuts going to realize that your heroes hate you? That voting for your heroes makes you personally far worse off? When are you going to realize that your heroes are going to keep the money for themselves, and never ever let you have it? Most of all, when are you going to realize that your heroes create stories that are lies to convince you that “one day you will be rich too” for you to trigger-on and vote for them, when the actual theories they work on are – to live off your backs? Do you even understand that “trickle-down” requires you to be down? And them to be above you, trickling all over you?

      If you really, honestly, truly want to get rich and you don’t have a father in banking, then buy a house in California, and sell it again 3 years later for at least $70k profit (and suffer the insults of poverty-stricken Rep-lovers who call your investment a “debt”). Or you could buy a house in WV debt-free, and make about $2 a year. That’s what the Real-Estate dominated Republicans want for you.

      Reply
      1. “trickling all over you?
        That was awesome! He he
        But true…..

        Reply
    2. Mortgage and car loan debt is not government debt though.

      Reply
  4. From John Rosevear at TMF Marlowe:

    “A breakdown of GM’s repayment to date
    Of that $49.5 billion that was lent to GM, the U.S. Treasury has so far recovered about $35.4 billion. Here’s how it breaks down:

    GM paid back $6.7 billion in cash, the last of which was paid in April 2010. That was when then-CEO Ed Whitacre declared in TV ads that GM’s debt had been “paid in full.” (I bet he wishes now that he hadn’t said that.)
    $13 billion via GM’s IPO, back in 2010. GM didn’t actually get any money from its own IPO – it was done primarily in order to let the government sell off part of its holdings. The Treasury Department sold about 45% of its total GM stock holdings in the IPO.
    The U.S. received another $2.1 billion when GM bought back some preferred stock from the Treasury in late 2010.
    The U.S. got another $5.5 billion when GM bought back 200 million shares of its stock from the Treasury last December. At the time, GM and the Treasury agreed that Treasury would sell its remaining holdings gradually, on the open market.
    Treasury has received about $8.1 billion from its sales of GM stock on the open market since the beginning of 2013.
    That leaves about $14.1 billion of the $49.5 billion loan still unpaid, and the Treasury Department with about 113 million shares of GM stock left to sell.

    To break even, Treasury would have to get about $125 per share for its remaining shares. But GM’s stock is currently trading around $36. At current prices, the Treasury’s remaining stock is worth a little over $4 billion.

    You see the problem.”

    Do you see the problem? California ain’t draining Washington’s coffers at all. All California debt is held by homeowners, not the state. However, your favorite GM owes YOU. But who do you yell at? You trigger-yell at California who owes you nothing, while you let GM take your money without a single whimper.

    Oh my god the STUPIDITY you right wingnuts spew all day, every day.

    Reply
    1. Amen. Sing it, brother!

      Reply
    2. OldTrombone, you spoke the truth so clearly, that there is no way in hell, someone could paint an alternate picture unless they’re delusional. You’re an amazing guy, and you really do your best to set these ignorant fu*s straight. Everything they see going against GM and posing a threat, they blow it off as Fake News

      Reply
  5. Move money the state does not have to give it to people who do not need it. That’s California in a nutshell.

    Reply
  6. California Governor Moonbeam is taking a page from Obama in trying to pick winners and losers by rewarding the wealthy who can afford to buy a Tesla get more tax dollars while the poor in California now pay 58.2 cents in excise taxes per gallon.

    Reply
  7. Big tax break and then raise the cost of electricity and registration fees to offset the loss of taxes from gas. so there is no winners.

    Reply
  8. California is so great, even Tomi Lahren calls it home…

    Reply
  9. Lower income taxpayers again helping the rich buy a new toy.

    Reply

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