Tamara Sheldon writes:

As an environmentalist who totes kids around town, I would love to buy an electric car. But here in South Carolina, the cheapest electric vehicles (EVs) are at least three times as expensive as my used VW Jetta. What about those big government subsidies, you ask? The truth is that EV subsidies overwhelmingly benefit the rich, not moderate-income people like me.

The US federal government will give you up to a $7,500 tax credit for an EV, but you only get this money at tax time, and you only get it all if you pay a lot in taxes. In 2016, 78 percent of federal EV tax credits went to taxpayers with incomes over $100,000.

My research has shown that most of these tax credits, as well as state subsidies, are paid out to consumers who would have bought the EV even without the extra benefit. And often, they go to people who treat them as additional cars rather than replacements for gas guzzlers, or who don’t drive them often enough to make the gas savings outweigh the environmental cost of making the car in the first place.

This is a waste of government money.

In the face of climate change, we need to accelerate the transition to electric transport (assuming the US makes enough renewable electricity to power it). The Biden administration’s goal is for EVs to account for 50 percent of new car sales by 2030, but the current share is less than 5 percent. Subsidies as they stand aren’t helping to get enough new EVs on the road. They are also unfair for poor communities. [Continue reading…]