E-mobility investments revealed in the USA
A week after US President Joe Biden unveiled his two-trillion-dollar investment plan, details are emerging about the e-mobility investments it includes. A whopping $100 billion is to go towards purchase subsidies for electric cars and $15 billion towards building 500,000 charging stations.
This revealed through an email from the US Department of Transportation to Congressional staffers, which was obtained by the news agency Reuters.
This would mean that a large part of the $174 billion earmarked for electromobility would be earmarked for purchase rebates and the expansion of charging networks. The Biden plan also includes $20 billion for electric school buses, $25 billion for electric public transport buses and $14 billion in tax incentives for electric vehicles.
Whether the two-trillion-dollar plan can be implemented as planned is questionable, however, as Biden is dependent on the support of some Republicans in the Senate, who have so far not signalled any concession. For the car industry, consumer rebates, in particular, would come in very handy. The two manufacturers General Motors and Tesla are known to be missing out on the tax credit of 7,500 dollars per electric car since they have sold more than 200,000 zero-emission models.
However, the email to Congressional staffers does not specify what the $100 billion budget would result in. Rumour has it that they could rise from 7,500 to 10,000 US dollars per electric car. However, the infrastructure plan published last week revealed that there would be both tax incentives and ‘POS rebates’ – i.e. direct subsidies at the point of sale. How these instruments are to interact is as yet unknown.
At the moment, the Democrats in Washington are putting forward a series of bills on the transport turnaround. For example, the proposal to pump at least 150 billion dollars into the electrification of public transport within ten years (“Build Green Infrastructure and Jobs Act”). Only a few weeks ago, members of Congress presented the “CLEAN Future Act” – a very detailed bill for climate policy, according to which, among other things, several billion dollars are to flow in to support programmes for charging infrastructure every year.
In mid-February, the party already presented a draft called the ‘GREEN Infrastructure & Jobs Act‘, which would increase the current limit of 200,000 electric cars subsidised by the US federal government per manufacturer by an additional 400,000 vehicles. Some congressmen are also putting pressure on Biden to enforce a fixed phase-out date for cars with internal combustion engines nationwide, following California’s example.
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