A large percentage of Americans don’t know that EVs qualify for up to $7,500 in federal tax credits. The latest subsidies for buying a fully-electric car, be it new or used, are part of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law in 2022. Despite EV tax credits being around for over a year now, 40 percent of Americans say they’ve heard nothing about the subsidies, according to Axios.
The data comes from a survey by BlueLab Analytics that focuses on the race or ethnicity of over 2,400 respondents in the U.S., categorized into White, Black Hispanic and Other. But more importantly, the overall percentage of Americans that have heard “nothing at all” of Biden’s EV tax credits is at 40 percent, while those that “don’t know” how much they’ve heard is at five percent. That makes for about 45 percent of respondents in the U.S. being oblivious in one way or another to EV tax credits under the IRA, which is an alarmingly high number.
This lack of awareness could end up hurting the rate of EV adoption in the U.S., though it doesn’t help that the provisions of the IRA make current tax credits harder to parse than in previous years, per Axios:
Consumer knowledge gaps could undercut the substantive and political impact of the 2022 climate law, which provides tax breaks for home efficiency retrofits, EVs, green appliances, and much more.
In the past, EVs were eligible for federal tax credits regardless of their origin, but the latest rules say EVs qualify for subsidies based on their country of assembly and the origin of their major components such as batteries.
The overall figure of 40 percent is exceeded by that of Black and Hispanic respondents who have not heard of the EV tax credits. A full 50 percent of Black Americans said they’ve heard nothing, while Hispanic Americans came in at 47 percent. White Americans were at 39 percent and whatever group of Americans the survey counts as Other comes in at 32 percent — the survey doesn’t go into detail as to how it defines Other.
Despite the results, the survey shows that Hispanic Americans indicate the highest preference of any group for buying an EV in the future, while Black Americans show the lowest preference. Women are slightly less likely to be planning for an EV purchase and they are much less aware of the EV tax credits, as Axios reports.
