ELECTRIC CARS TOO COSTLY FOR MANY, EVEN WITH AID IN CLIMATE BILL

Battery-powered vehicles are considered essential to the fight against climate change, but most models are aimed at the affluent

Ford has stopped taking orders for Lightning electric pickups, with a theoretical starting price of about $40,000, because it can’t make them fast enough.Credit…Sylvia Jarrus for The New York Times

By Jack Ewing

Aug. 8, 2022

Policymakers in Washington are promoting electric vehicles as a solution to climate change. But an uncomfortable truth remains: Battery-powered cars are much too expensive for a vast majority of Americans.

Congress has begun trying to address that problem. The climate and energy package passed on Sunday by the Senate, the Inflation Reduction Act, would give buyers of used electric cars a tax credit.

But automakers have complained that the credit would apply to only a narrow slice of vehicles, at least initially, largely because of domestic sourcing requirements. And experts say broader steps are needed to make electric cars more affordable and to get enough of them on the road to put a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions.

~~~ READ IN NYT ~~~