Do you believe in climate change? How fast should we try to mitigate it?
Rapid EV deployment pays dividends not only in cleaner air and reduced greenhouse gas emissions, but also energy security and a reduction of transportation costs at scale.
China knows this, they are smart. The US? Not so smart.
If tax credit incentives don't achieve lower emissions, then scrapping the credits is sensible.
I tried to find a study on whether EVs do actually decrease total carbon emissions overall in the US. Embodied carbon, low mileage (second car?), high emission electricity generation, how profits are spent, etcetera, can peversely cause increased emissions.
One figure I found was: Teslas 8,786 annual miles compared with 11,642 for gasoline cars (in their sample). In 2022, the average driver in the U.S. drove 13,596 miles. Incentivising very low mileage users with high carbon footprint manufacture would be environmentally unsound.
> In terms of emissions, we estimate that eliminating the EV tax credits would increase 2030 emissions by
20.3 million metric tons (mmt) vs. the 2030 baseline forecast; eliminating all the policies raises emissions
by a total of 44.1 mmt.
The amounts are irrelevant, so your snippet is just scare figures. What is relevant is whether the $ spent to save Y metric tons makes sense.
The first line of the table on page 7 of your link shows EV Credits were going to cost 168.5 billion to save 1.0 mmt CO2 Emissions. I'm not sure why they mention 20 mmt in your snippet.
I tried to find something good to compare against but I'm no expert. From looking at carbon credit prices I suspect that there are better ways to reduce CO2 if you want to spend 168500 million dollars.
Rapid EV deployment pays dividends not only in cleaner air and reduced greenhouse gas emissions, but also energy security and a reduction of transportation costs at scale.
China knows this, they are smart. The US? Not so smart.