Also re: the $7500 federal tax rebate, most people can't take full advantage because they don't owe that much and it doesn't carry over past the first year. Still a good program but not a magic wand solution.
I am pretty sure most of those who can afford to purchase a 35k+ car are making at least 40k / year and owe that much in federal taxes, unless I am not calculating something right
The US middle class is relatively lightly taxed.
Anyway, this is pretty far off the original question of why EVs are being subsidized via tax rebates in the US.
By making the car more affordable for wealthy (but not that wealthy) people, it eventually brings the cost down for everybody.
Maybe you are thinking of FICA?
In the worst case (single or married filing separately; in this range the numbers look the same), the standard deduction is $6350 and the single personal exemption is $4050 in 2017. So your taxable income is $29,600 assuming you aren't putting any pre-tax money into retirement savings.
The 10% tax bracket for those filing statuses goes to $9325 in 2017. The 15% bracket goes to $37,950. Tax on $29,600 ends up being $3974.
To get to $7500 in tax you have to have about $47k of taxable income, and hence about $57k of gross income, for single or married-filing-separately filers.
For married filing jointly filers, you have to have about $56k of taxable income, standard deduction is $12,700, two personal exemtions is $8100, so you need at least $76,800 in gross income to owe this much.
The OP said “most people don’t pay $7500...” which is not true since I said you have to have “at least 40K+ salary in order to afford that $35k+ car. I did not say you have to have 40k salary to pay 7500$+ in taxes
I have no opinion on what the actual incomes are of people who buy $35k cars, because I don't have any data to that effect. I'd really _hope_ they all make more than $57k/year gross, but given the weird things people do with debt I'd love to see actual data on this point.
And if not, lease it. The Bolt is leasing insanely well right now - https://leasehackr.com/blog/2017/10/16/bolt-ev-never-been-be...
Well, right. If _I_ am buying it, I sure hope I am too!
I tried finding some data on what people actually do, but the writing online on the topic seems to be a morass where "median" and "average" are used interchangeably, which makes all the numbers more or less useless. :(
For married filing jointly, standard deduction (same page, table 4) is $12,700. Two personal exemptions (same page, same table) is $8,100. So the total is about $76,800.
Really? Why is that? For me and I’m sure tons of other people 250 miles is more than enough. I think it’s extremely rare I’d go 100+ in a day.
If this was from Honda or Toyota I’d probably jump at it if I needed a new car.
I’ve never had any experience with GM, and their reputation isn’t exactly stellar.
I'm excited to see where things are in 3 to 5 years when we're in the cycle for another vehicle. If a moderately equipped package can land in the $30k range and travel 350+ on a single charge, it will be very intriguing.
[1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/05/04/new-car...
http://massenergywebservices.com/drivegreen/table-all.php#bo...
I've confirmed other prices through this program and believe they're accurate.
Why? I drive a large Hybrid sedan. I get a bit above 600 miles on a tank of gas without thinking about it. That's a trip from NYC to Toronto with about 100 miles of driving around range left before having to think about finding a gas station...or for our European friends, Paris to Munich with 160 km to spend looking for parking. If I try for range I can easily add another 50-75 miles to that just by being mindful of my driving.
My previous car got 300-350 miles to a tank and during a normal commuting period I had to fill it up every couple of weeks. I now go a month or so between fill ups. I've gotten so used to this kind of range that I often forget to even check how much fuel I have left since I only ever have to fill it up 12-15 times a year. My "low fuel" light comes on when I have 75 miles of range left.
During city driving, the gas engine is usually off and I spend lots of time driving around on pure electric (the drive-train favors the electric motor when possible and has no gearing transmission at all).
Total fill-up time, <10 minutes. With the freakishly low U.S. gas prices and since the car takes 87 octane fuel, it's about $40 to fill up or about $500 - $600 per year or about $2,500 - $3,000 in fuel costs over a 5 year lifetime of the vehicle.
The vehicle cost me $27k loaded (plus interest blah blah) out the door, I paid cash.
TCO over 5 years for this vehicle is expected to run somewhere between $33-$35k and that includes regular maintenance, tires, oil changes (but minus insurance and taxes) or somewhere in the neighborhood of $.75/mile. I'll probably keep the car longer than that so the cost/mile gets better. The newer model of my car estimates out to around 700-750 miles per tank, so TCO figures should be adjusted accordingly.
The cost to charge a Bolt depends on local electrical rates, but the average cost in the U.S. is $.12/kWh. The cost to charge a Bolt for a year with my profile turns out to be $400-500/yr or about $2500 over 5 years.
The Bolt is a smaller car, 0-60 is similar, takes 9 hours to charge off a wall socket every 238 miles (which will be realistically less) or if I have thousands of dollars in fast charge infrastructure in place about 30 minutes to get 200 miles.
I know several electric car owners who got Leafs on the cheap, and those are pretty appealing to be honest, and they use them as commuter cars. Range isn't a problem for them typically because they just charge every night, I'm sure the same is true for Bolt owners (and Tesla owners). But I'm lazy, and probably would forget to charge it half the time, and right now I'm going 4-5 weeks between "charges" (fill-ups). In a pinch, I have no place to charge my car at work at all, or most of the other places I currently frequent. The nearest fast charger to me is a 20 minute drive, one way without traffic. If I had a Tesla, the nearest Super Charger is 30 minutes away without traffic.
So when I think about "going electric", I have to compare things and on most metrics, I have a better car than the Bolt, and on many metrics I care about a better car than a Tesla Model 3.
You don't even have to wait in line or pre-order to get my car. Just go to a local dealer and drive off the lot with one.
We're not there yet. Closer, but still maybe 7-10 years out. Modern Hybrids are the state of the art at the moment and mass consumers won't be interested in regressing.
> I paid cash.
How are you paying interest if you paid cash?
I totally understand that there are people who would buy a pure EV if it was cheaper, and that's not here yet.
The top of the line Model S gets around 315 miles to a charge (X's get a bit less), it was a world changer because it was an electric car that got about what a normal ICE car gets in range so there was little penalty there. Not many people need to directly drive from NYC to Toronto in a single stretch all that often.
bonus: the cars are stupid fast and have incredible amounts of storage so they're better than other cars on the market
negative: they're very expensive and recharge still takes lots of time or less time but with expensive home infrastructure (but still not gas refill time)
What makes them exciting is that for a couple of downsides (price and recharge time) you get a car that's at least as good than old fashioned ICE cars and better than them in most other areas. They represent the least compromised vision of electrics you can buy today.
The smaller electrics aren't getting near that yet...it will take a few years of battery improvements before that happens. I think lots of people want a Model 3 aspirationally hoping that it has some of the positive qualities of an S, but the reality is that they're much more compromised vehicles. Tesla's approach to dealing with this is to try to make the cars as incomparable to ICE's as possible with loads of electronic features like autoparking and autopilot and whatever and an interior that's not like anything else on the planet -- but they're the only electric car maker who really gets that. By making the Model 3 hard to compare to anything else, it makes it stand out.
>it's about $40 to fill up or about $500 - $600 per year
>the average cost in the U.S. is $.12/kWh. The cost to charge a Bolt for a year with my profile turns out to be $400-500/yr
Does not compute.
The above two figures indicate that you drive 7500-9000 miles per year. So a Bolt would cost you $250-300 per year in electricity (assuming real-world driving), not $400-500 per year.