Publication: Sacramento Bee
If you’ve been thinking about buying a pricey electric car in California, you’d better get on it soon if you’d like to get a rebate from the state.
Last month, the state agency that manages California’s electric vehicle rebate program announced that beginning Dec. 3, it was going to discontinue rebate programs for new electric cars that cost more than $60,000 and for plug-in hybrid cars that can only travel 35 miles on a single charge.
The agency also is reducing rebates for higher-income buyers for some hybrids, zero-emission motorcycles and vehicles with fuel cells, and limiting the number of rebates Californians can receive to once per lifetime.
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Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, said he was disappointed by the changes, especially since a federal tax credit for cars such as the Chevy Volt and the Telsa Model 3 is going away, which he said will hurt sales.
He said California only has 600,000 electric vehicles on the road today, well short of the state’s goal of putting 5 million on the road by 2030.
“I think the rebates should be going up not down,” Ting said. “I think we should be bolder. Climate change is real. ... If we want clean air, we need clean cars. We have to do everything possible to move people out of dirty cars into clean cars as soon as possible.”
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