This $15,000 discount, coupled with the federal government’s $7,500 tax credit, means that some buyers of the Transit Connect Electric will get a whopping $22,500 off the vehicle’s $57,400 price tag.
Vouchers for the light-duty zero-emissions category are valued at $15,000 for a fleet’s first vehicle ordered, with $12,000 off all purchases thereafter for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2011. Proposed vouchers for Fiscal Year 2012 dip to $12,000 for the first three vehicles, $10,000 for the next 27 purchased, $8,000 for vehicles 31-65 and $6,000 for vehicles 66-100.
kind of a steep price($35k after both rebates) if you ask me, but if you factor in all the maintenance you won’t have to do over its’ life, you might break even.
Seeing that it’s not that aerodynamic and will probably carry some weight around, I would be real interested to see real life miles per charge figures. I’m completely sold on electric cars…just not on the batteries they choose to put in them and the price they ask. Right now, they are priced not to sell.
So Unpopular That You’d Have Tie A Bone Around Your Neck To Get The Dog To Play With You ?
Is That The Real Story Of This Push To EVs That People Don’t Want ?
Federal and State Governments don’t have money of their own to spend freely on these rebates, so they take it from workers (Think Taxes). Then they decide how to redistribute it as they see fit.
As the rebates wind down, the sales will too. The whole execise will prove to be another boondoggle.
We truely get the government we deserve. I’ll see all of you at the ballot box soon.
I’m sure the greenies will say it’s a good way to spend CA’s limited financial resources. After all, the government owns the printing presses and can always turn them back on to make more money, right?
So, $7500 of my tax dollars are going to be given to someone to buy a $57,400 vehicle that they can’t afford by themselves? How is this right again?
Let them walk. If a manufacturer makes a vehicle too highly priced for the market, or a buyer wants to buy a vehicle they cannot afford, my tax dollars should not be used to compensate. I cannot afford a $57,000 vehicle, so why should I help pay for theirs?
And if that $15,000 “discount” is coming from the California taxpayers, they have 15,000 MORE reasons to be upset. Especially since California has serious financial problems that their tax money SHOULD be going toward solving.
TSM, My Electric Company Surcharges Me (Taxes Me) A Buck Or two Every Month For A “Green Energy” Program As Required By The State Government.
They use the money to try and teach me how to be green and save energy buying CFL light bulbs, etcetera. The problem is that I use very little electricity . . . I’m as green as Kermit ! I’ve been using CFLs since before anybody had heard of them (weren’t available in stores, yet). I have other electricity saving measures, too.
Another service they provide is to pay me $30 (of my own confiscated tax money) if I call and have them haul away a refrigerator. Their thinking is that if I get a new one that it will be more efficient and they’re correct on that. So I call and schedule a pick-up and get a date, install my new fridge, and when they don’t show up I call.
I’m told (by a distant downstate agency . . . isn’t handled by local utility) that the program is out of money for the year (redistributed everybody’s taxes already). I haul the old refrigerator to the metal recyclers, myself.
Send in a form to get a rebate on CFLs. I wait. Same thing . . . out of other people’s money and am told to read the fine print that explains rebates can be limited to funds available.
They take my money. I do what I’m supposed to do. I get nothing. What do you think ?
A Ford Transit Connect XLT costs less than $23,000 and the electric version costs $35,000 after rebates. Let Ed Begley Jr. buy some. He can afford it. I’ll just pay for gas.
This is where I depart from other greenies. We should encourage the auto makers to build high mileage cars that do not use oil alone that EVERYONE can afford w/o tax payer rebates. They can be made powered from worm feces for all most of us care. Eventually, EVs may work and run cheaply.
For now, don’t parade EVs around as though they actually solve problems. The higher ups know more then we poor underlings whether suitable batteries are available. We assume they aren’t so stop over taxing diesel in the mean time and make all cars flex fuel including alcohol and nat. gas and open up the energy competition to power transportation to include everyone, and not just oil producers and subsidized farmers. If my beer goes bad, I’d like the option to dump it into a car that can run on it…a little far fetched but I hope we get the point.
I get the point, Dag, and I agree with it. Tax rebates to try to encourage purchases by people that they cannor afford or would not otherwise buy are a bad idea for a number of reasons.
They take money from others (many of whom are already struggling) to give to these people, reducing the “payers” ability to purchase other products and destimulating the economy.
They also provide artificial support to a product that can’t survive once the rebates end, and divert investment in technological advances that just might be able to survice on their own merits.
They complicate an already ovely complicated tax system by adding yet another entitlement (albiet temporary).
And for every dollar they give away the feds actually have to take in an unknown amount of dollars, certainly more than they gave away.
Oh, yeah, and every dollar a government in defiicit gives away has to ultimately be obtained by selling T-bonds, on which the government has to pay interest.
It would be interesting to find out how many dollars it actually costs the government every time it gives away $1000 as a tax rebate. I’ll bet the amount is staggering.
I hear you Same. I’m not going to pretend that rebates do not still find there way back into the economy and act as a quasi stimulus. But, it’s very inefficient and costs we, the lower 99% additionally in taxes and dealing with dreadful ethanol. It’s someone’s false ideal that oil and water mix. Give me a vehicle capable and citified to run on any alcohol based fuel alone and get out of the way and allow private entrepreneurs the freedom to compete against and not in colusion with oil products and govt. sponsored programs.