Study Shows Federal Incentives For EV Cars May Do More Harm Than Good

Do government subsidies, popular here in the United States to help lower the upfront costs of buying electric cars, impact used values when one goes to resell it later? That’s the theory from a new study out of Europe suggesting items like that up to $7,500 off a Nissan Leaf via the federal government credit could actually be posing a threat to the viability of the future EV market.

Now I’m going to steer away from politics on this story, as one could easily get into the debate of whether or not government support of private sector matter is a good or bad thing. Instead, here’s what Cap Consulting researchers found against the background of a “cautious market view of EVs” which suggests the cars “already typically depreciate around twice as heavily as a conventional car, such as the Volkswagen Golf or Ford Focus.” In short, they

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MattDarringer - 12/20/2013 5:17:37 PM

+2 Boost

Buying an EV is stupid. Leasing one MIGHT make sense. EVs are in their "Model T" years thus buying one means that 3-5 years later it will be horribly outdated. Let's not talk about the extreme cost of a battery replacement. The government should not engineer consumer sales.

randy3023 - 12/22/2013 5:22:23 PM

+1 Boost

Every last person agrees, the government should not be involved in this, and yet they go ahead and do it anyway. So what difference does our opinion make?