Thinking of buying your first EV? California has some money for you!

If you live in California and were thinking about buying an electric vehicle for the first time, but, were put off by the pricing and the removal of certain federal EV credits by the Trump administration, then has California got a deal for you!

Photo Credit: MyFirstEV/CARB

This month, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that three automakers are now offering instant rebates through California's MyFirstEV program. As a result, buyers can walk into any Hyundai, Lucid, or Tesla dealer and buy or lease their first zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) and grab a discount of $3,500 on a new model or $1,750 on a used one. 

Half of the rebate will be provided by California and the other half by the vehicle manufacturer. Additionally, manufacturers headquartered in California who only make ZEVs, e.g., Lucid, are exempt from the price caps.

Ford, Rivian, Chevrolet, and Kia are planning to also join this program later this month, with Toyota/Lexus, Honda, Subaru, and Mitsubishi later this year. Additionally, Nissan and Volvo are still determining when they will join the program.

For more information and details in the program, check this link: California launches MyFirstEV instant rebate program for first-time buyers

Will the world run out of Electric Vehicle (EV) batteries in 4 years?

Electric vehicles are seen as a key to reducing global CO2 emissions to positively impact adverse climate change effects from fossil fuels. Recent studies have shown that over an assumed vehicle lifetime, electric vehicles do have a smaller, cradle-to-grave overall environmental impact than traditional gasoline fueled vehicles. (Some of the assumptions used for vehicle life expectancy may be questionable - there isn't a lot of history of EVs operating for 100,000+ miles, for example - but, that's a discussion for another story!)

Photo Credit: Oleg Alexandrov, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tesla_Motors_Model_S_base.JPG

Bank of America financial analysts have just predicted that based on current and future sales predictions, as well as government mandates to reduce and/or possibly ban the sale of new fossil fueled fired vehicles, a worldwide EV battery shortage will occur as soon as 2025.

That's 4 years from now. What happens then? If you're driving a 10 year old EV and need to replace your battery (or buy/lease a new EV), how do you do it? Where will you go?

EVs have notoriously high upfront costs (which studies show are mitigated over an EV's lifetime after factoring in government tax incentives and general maintenance costs), but, there is this little Capitalism principal called the Law of Supply and Demand that is going to come into play here if this happens.

If people are being steered toward buying EVs because new fossil fueled cars are being frowned upon (if not banned), and, if the most important "part" of an EV (the battery!) is in short supply, guess what will happen?

The price of EVs will skyrocket.

Something to think about...your civil comments and thoughts may be made below.