These Are the Cars That Qualify Now for the New Tax Credit

Speaker 1: You may have heard there are all new federal rules for you to get a $7,500 federal tax credit when you buy a car with a plug, a new electric car. The problem is the rules are really complicated compared to the last set. You can check out my story and video on all the intricacies, or I can just tell you what cars qualify now and in the near future that you can go look at. This is based on research done by Consumer Reports and the Department of Energy with some of my margin notes attached. Let's go Speaker 1: [00:00:30] The Chevy Bolt and the more utilitarian bolt, E U V are both really solid choices, well known and don't need an introduction to speak of. However, they are kind of the tail end of GM's old technology. They do not use the new Ultium electric battery technology. The GM's about to pivot to and make all of its electric cars run run on top of that [00:01:00] may give some buyers a little pause as well as of course the black eye, the bolt got from its previous Battery Tech being involved in a number of high profile fires. That doesn't scare me away from a bolt to be honest, but you do need to wait until January 1st, 2023 because the bolt comes from General Motors and GM lost their ability to offer federal tax credits because they were too good at selling cars with a plug. The old rule had a 200,000 car cap. The new rule does not, but that doesn't take effect until 1 1 23. [00:01:30] Also know that like many cars on this list, the exact credit you get may vary by the sourcing percentage of critical battery materials in the vehicle. You may get less than $7,500 if a minimum percentage of critical materials aren't sourced from the US or a country with which we have a free trade agreement. Like I said, complicated. Speaker 2: The Speaker 1: F-150 Lightning is the only full size electric pickup so [00:02:00] far. I'm taping right now in mid-October 2022 and the F-150 Lightning came out as a screaming bargain. We couldn't believe how cheap this thing was. Base price, well that's changed. The base with destination used to be 41,669 Crazy Town. Now it's 53 769. As I totaled it up, that still leaves plenty of room to get this thing under $80,000, which is also one of the new rules. Trucks and utilities cannot [00:02:30] cost more than 80 grand with all your options and your destination charge if you want to get a federal tax credit. But that shouldn't be a big problem with an F-150. Another problem though is do you wanna wait for an electric Silverado? More on that in a minute. Speaker 1: Staying with Ford, the mock E has been an absolute hit. It is by most accountings, zoomed up the sales charts to now sit squarely amidst all the Tesla models. That's really impressive. And Ford never lost their tax credit [00:03:00] because they didn't quite sell as many cars as gm, Tesla, and Toyota. So you have no problem there on timing. A Maki should rather comfortably fit inside the $80,000 maximum price for a utility vehicle as well. The only issues on this vehicle are that it will be coming up for a redo in 2026. That's a long time from now. Not really a problem, and a lot of folks are gonna wanna wait and cross shop it against the all new electric Chevy Blazer, which I'll talk about in a moment. Speaker 1: [00:03:30] Okay, The Nissan Leaf doesn't exactly set anybody's hair on fire. It's a real left brain kind of choice, right? But it's solid, it's well known, and Nissan builds a good electric car. Eventually it's gonna go out of production again around 2025. 2026 is the expectation to yield just a Nissan line of electric cars. That's a very different strategy and it's far enough down the road that I wouldn't sweat it if you want to buy a leaf. Now, Nissan never lost their caps. You can jump on one immediately if [00:04:00] you find it and know that they also are gonna fit very tightly under the $55,000 max for a sedan or coup. Speaker 1: The rivian R one s and R one T are real favorites of mine. I know it's a startup. It's the smallest volume car in my list. However, they have that wow factor. When you buy one of these and take it out on the road, you better like attention. People are gonna pull you over and say, Wow, it's a rivian. Can I check it out? We take you for a ride. You know, all kinds of crazy stuff. It's a lot of [00:04:30] fun to own one of these, and they are great vehicles. However, they do have a price issue. You're gonna be hard pressed to keep one of these under $80,000. It's an expensive vehicle. That's all there is to it. And they did just have a very publicized recall of almost every car they've ever made to tighten a bolt. Now, I'd be more concerned if it was for a bad battery or motor or buggy computer. It's not that it's something relatively mundane that a lot of car makers have to pull cars back for, but when you're a startup company [00:05:00] in a time of economic headwinds, you gotta watch these things. Speaker 1: Nothing needs to be said about the model three and model Y from Tesla. These are the kings of the mountain in terms of electric car sales and mind share. But no, that you've gotta wait until January one of 23 on these. Also, because Tesla was the first company to lose access to the federal tax credit because they were so successful and sold so many cars, they blew through the cap a long time ago. An [00:05:30] interesting side note, you cannot buy a model three or Model Y with Tesla's full self driving option that highly talked about driver assist tech. That isn't what it says it is. If you did that, you'd end up with a car that costs more than the respective federal limits for a tax credit. 55 grand for a sedan and 80 grand for a utility. But I'm not gonna lose any sleep about you not getting Tesla fsd. The Volkswagen ID four has got an interesting wrinkle to it. You've [00:06:00] gotta make sure you buy one made in the US right about now when I'm taping in mid-October, they're just starting to put these things out of their New Tennessee plant. Prior to that, the ID four is sold in the us, all came out of a German plant, and that would negate them from being available for a full federal tax credit for our federal tax credit at all. So make sure if you look at one of these, you know where it comes from. Speaker 1: Now, as you've noticed, when we turn the corner into 2023, a number of makes of vehicles are going to once again become [00:06:30] eligible for the federal tax credit. But what also happens is a number of cars, what we've never seen before, are gonna be in showrooms. Let's take a look. Speaker 2: The Speaker 1: Cadillac lyric starts about 63 grand. Uh, EPA should class this one as a light utility, which means that 63 will fit within the $80,000 maximum for that kind of car. So that's all good. The other interesting thing here is it's kind of the first GM car to have the new battery platform called LTM that [00:07:00] I mentioned earlier. Now, you could technically say the electric Hummer offered it first, but that's not a mainstream vehicle. Uh, the reservations are all sold out and you can't fit one under the $80,000 limit. So this is really a big deal. Ltms gonna be where GM puts all of their bets, so you gotta get excited about waiting for it. Speaker 1: Then there's the Chevy Blazer Ev. This one's gonna go head on against the Mustang Maee. This is not the current blazer with an electric motor. It's [00:07:30] a whole new vehicle that is an electric sport crossover. They say it has Camaro DNA the same way the Maee has Mustang dna. We're setting up a real head-to-head challenge here. A lot of folks are gonna wanna wait and cross shop these two, and while people tend to be lined up as Chevy or Ford people, that's kind of an old idea, and I believe a lot more cross shopping is gonna take place. Speaker 2: But Speaker 1: No cross shopping is gonna compare to the battle between the F-150 Lightning we talked about and the new electric Silverado [00:08:00] that is coming in 2023. Now, they used to say truck people never changed brands. Ford for life, Chevy for life, Ram for life. I don't think I buy that as much anymore because electric vehicles have reset the table Generationally, people are less in love with a particular make of car, and so you're gonna see a lot of folks saying, Well, I was driving a gas engine F-150. Maybe I look at an electric Silverado. So I think a friend around people are gonna wait and say, Okay, let me just hold off a little longer and let me see what's out there in terms of these two [00:08:30] electric pickups. By the way, the really patient are gonna wait till 24 when the Ram arrives as an electric pickup, then you've really got a battle. Speaker 1: The final vehicle on my list, kind of on my list is the Tesla cyber truck because we don't really know when it's coming, if it's coming, and what it will really cost. It's still kind of out there on Elon Musk's Twitter feed for the most part, but he says it's coming in 23. Tesla has said the cyber [00:09:00] truck will cost just under 40 grand before tax credit. Ford hasn't even been able to hold anything near that line, so I have my substantial doubts. Whether it gets a tax credit or not is not gonna dampen the sales of the cyber truck. It's gonna sell on passion and pent up demand. Just fine.