Used electric vehicles are in greater demand than ever before

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Environmentalists say tax credits can make EVs — new and used — for people with moderate incomes. They have argued that EVs should be more than just a subsidized luxury asset for the wealthy.
However, local programs have been costly to attract recipients, even among low-income residents. Oregon’s clean vehicle rebate program, for low- and moderate-income households that began in 2018, has selected only 516 buyers of used electric vehicles, or about 5 percent of the vehicles purchased through the program. The rest bought new models.
Alejandra Posada, of Peninsula Clean Energy, the electrical service in San Mateo, California, which manages the used EV rebate program, cites several reasons for the slow use. Most of the participants in this program, which was launched in 2019 for low-income residents, were looking for cheaper vehicles, leaving them with few opportunities for wide-range EVs. These buyers were often single-car homes and wanted an electric vehicle as their main vehicle, not as a second car to drive around town, a more common situation for wealthier buyers. In the first two years, 30 of those who took about 100 in the program opted for fully electric cars, Posada said. Most opted for plug-in hybrids, before being taken over by a gasoline engine with an electric range of about a dozen miles.
“It’s a big-touch job,” Posada says of setting up electric vehicles that people use. This means helping people navigate other incentive programs to make costs more reasonable. He talks about the uncertainties about batteries and autonomy and charging logistics. Many people don’t know, for example, that they can connect an EV to a standard outlet.
Many Americans are confused about the basics of electric vehicles, says Jeff Allen, executive director of Forth, a promotion and research organization focused on electric mobility. He still hears a question from drivers: “‘ Can I take it safely out of the car wash? Spoiler: Yes, ”he says.
Fears about EV batteries are also diminishing. “What a great performance the batteries in these cars have had [car companies] he thought, “says Luke Walch, of Green Eyed Motors, an electric vehicle dealership in Boulder, Colorado. permission of the owners, The appellant collects data on 6,000 electric vehicles on the road. “Transparency here helps accelerate the market,” says Scott Case, founder and CEO.
Stephanie King, who lives outside of Portland, Oregon, bought her second electric vehicle — and used it for the first time — this month after an accident with her old car. The used 2019 Kia Niro was more expensive than the new one it bought two years ago, but it wasn’t so much available, he says. For King, electric driving is non-negotiable, mainly because he is a full-time driver who travels many miles in the car. “I couldn’t do that to my planet,” he says of gasoline-powered cars. He is presenting papers to take advantage of the Oregon allowance program.
Policy experts are divided on the value of EV incentives, especially for used cars. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is “not a well-targeted solution,” explains economist Dave Rapson, a professor at the University of California at Davis. EVs are greener than conventional cars, but they still use a dirty power grid, and the money spent to force them to take them can be better used to clean up the power supply of public services and large industries. Credit programs for new EVs have been expensive, part of the benefit that automakers can absorb as an opportunity to raise prices. This type of filling may have made more sense a decade ago, when car manufacturers were reluctant to build electric vehicles, but now they are fewer, with a tremendous shift to fully electric lines. (This is a gradual abolition of the initial federal tax credit when a carmaker sold 200,000 vehicles.) And as these discounts help lower electric vehicle prices, additional incentives for used cars cause a “double reduction,” according to Rapson. Incentives for new EVs come down to resale prices.
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