incentives

Austria is offering would-be electric-car owners (and current ones) a tempting incentive to go tailpipe-emissions-free: permission to drive faster than those with gasoline, diesel, or hybrid vehicles in certain conditions. Under a recently approved amendment to the country’s speed limits...

The government of Ontario amended its plug-in electric vehicle incentive program in March, eliminating incentives for vehicles with a recommended price of $75,000 or more. What effect will this have on demand for Tesla’s Model S and X? Two years ago, this site analyzed the impacts on...

For years, green-car buyers in California have enjoyed a special perk: access to high-occupancy vehicle lanes that can whiz past gridlock, even with just a single occupant. Now, updates to the rules signed into law in October by Governor Jerry Brown will likely change the way owners and shoppers...

Costa Rica isn't what you'd call a bastion of automotive sales. Wedged between Nicaragua and Panama, the country is home to 4.8 million people who buy just 154,000 vehicles annually—less than 1 percent of U.S. vehicle sales each year. But that won't deter the Costa Rican government from...

With Tesla likely to hit 200,000 electric cars sold in the U.S. later this year, it will begin a phasedown process during which the income-tax credits available to its buyers start to dwindle on a set schedule. General Motors is likely to hit the same cap a couple of quarters after Tesla. Now those...

How badly do you want to buy a BMW i3 electric car? Initially, it looked like you'd have to move to areas of California where Southern California Edison would be your electric utility. But soon enough, those areas expanded to other parts of California, some areas of New Jersey where PSE&G...

It's been a topic of discussion for years: What will happen when a carmaker reaches the cap on U.S. sales of electric cars that qualify for the full federal tax credit of $7,500? That number is 200,000; after the rest of that calendar quarter and the one following, the credit is halved for a...

It's clear that incentives to buy specific cars work best when they can be applied directly at the time of sale. That's why purchase rebates are widely preferred by electric-car advocates to tax credits, which may take up to 15 months to be usable, depending on the timing of the purchase and tax...

A major contributor to electric-car sales is the program under which buyers of new electric cars qualify for a federal income-tax credit of up to $7,500. But these tax credits are not unlimited. Once a manufacturer reaches sales of 200,000 plug-in electric cars (after December 31, 2009), the...

Fears that Congress would kill the federal tax credit for purchase of a plug-in electric car were laid to rest in December when that incentive survived the $1.5 trillion tax-cut bill. Now Congress has added back a handful of other tax credits related to electric cars and greener transportation in...

In less than three months, personal income-tax returns or 2017 will be due for most U.S. adults. Some of those taxpayers will have bought a plug-in electric car last year, knowing that the Federal government offers an income-tax credit to help reduce the effective cost. But as more and more...

Several years ago, Georgia offered a generous state-tax credit for purchase of a zero-emission vehicle, and its sales of electric cars boomed. When state politics interceded to kill that credit in 2015—and add a new tax specifically on those same vehicles—the state became a case study...

Leases are a minority of overall car sales in the U.S., though the numbers soar for pricier luxury vehicles versus the less expensive, plain-Jane vehicles that serve as daily transport for most drivers. That rule flips for electric cars: Most pricey Teslas appear to be purchased outright, while...

A state at the forefront of U.S. electric-vehicle adoption has set an ambitious goal of nearly 1 million plug-in electric cars on its roads by 2030. Colorado, which counted 13,000 electric vehicles on the road at the end of 2017, rolled out an aggressive plan this week to achieve that goal. Its...

After announcing it would ban the sale of fossil-fuel vehicles by 2030, the world's second-most populous country plans to support that goal through private and corporate partnerships and government incentives. India's decision to end fossil-fuel sales in the country comes with unique challenges...

As China stares down climate change and smog alerts in numerous cities, the central government has extended its tax rebates for hybrid and electric vehicles for another three years. Announced on December 27, the move is one of many recently that will eventually see traditional internal-combustion...

The tax reform bill likely to be voted on by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives retained a number of provisions originally slated to be cut from the tax code. Among them was the federal income-tax credit for purchase of a plug-in electric vehicle. Three carmakers—General Motors...

We'll likely never know whether it was the influence of auto lobbyists, pressure from the actual public, or a letter signed by two dozen mayors. But however the sausage was made, it appears that the U.S. income-tax credit for purchase of a plug-in electric vehicle will not be killed after all...

As the electric-vehicle market matures and more global automakers commit to building battery-powered cars, one driving force has emerged to lead the pack. With apologies to the title of a comedy from half a century ago ... The Chinese Are Coming. That's the assertion made by old China hand Michael...

Two bills from the Senate and House of Representatives that would radically reform U.S. tax policy for the first time in three decades are now being reconciled by a joint committee from both houses of Congress. No public hearings on those bills have been held in either chamber, and the legislation...