Washington State Expands Electric Car Incentive Program

A new law signed by Washington governor Jay Inslee makes two important changes to the state’s electric car incentive program. The changes add plug-in hybrid cars, provided they have at least 30 miles of range. It also raises the maximum sale price from $35,000 to $42,500. Not coincidentally, the higher sale price will allow several cars like the Chevy Volt, Nissan LEAF SL, and the upcoming Tesla Model 3 and Chevy Bolt to qualify for the state incentive of $3,100. The rebate is available whether the car is purchased or leased.

Curiously, the changes do not go into effect until July 1, meaning sales of higher end electric and plug-in cars will probably have a lull in Washington over the next 10 weeks or so. JJ McCoy, legislative director for the Seattle Electric Vehicle Association tells Inside EVs,

“This bill will help get more Washington residents behind the wheel of a great EV. Several exciting mid-market cars with 200 miles of range will be in showrooms soon, and Washington’s incentive will give them a boost. Electric vehicles have a host of benefits – lower carbon emissions, lower fueling costs, better air quality – but they still cost more to make than an equivalent gas car,” McCoy said.

“As car makers scale up battery production and prices fall, EVs will soon be able to compete un-subsidized and provide a compelling value proposition. Fueling up costs just $0.85 a ‘gallon’ on Washington electricity rates, so once you have the car, you’re saving money with every mile. They’re also just a lot of fun to drive. We find that once people try an EV, they never they never want to go back to their gas car.”

The rebate program is scheduled to end on July 1, 2019, or one month after Washington sells 7,500 EVs that qualify for the exemption. McCoy says current estimates, based on the rate of electric car sales in his home state, are that there will be 7,500 qualified EVs on the road by the middle of 2018. If you are planning to buy an EV and live in the state of Washington, the time to act is now if you want to save an additional $3,100 on the purchase price of your car.

Photo credit: Seattle Electric Vehicle Association

Chevy Volt Fleet Owners Getting Awful MPG

The Chevy Volt is as much of an electric car as you want to be, and some Volt enthusiasts have gone more than 2,300 miles on a single gallon of gasoline. Yet a new report suggests that some other Chevy Volts, most notably those owned by private and/or public vehicle fleets, aren’t doing much electric driving.

Green Car Reports recently followed up on a report by InsideEVs to see why a big batch of high-mileage Chevy Volts had such low average MPG numbers. The problem it seems is that fleet managers aren’t incentivizing efficient driving, and until they do, we can only expect more of the same.

Many fleets operate by paying drivers on a per-mile basis. People who drive a lot for a living are then compensated on cumulative gasoline costs…but they aren’t recouped for the much-lower costs incurred by plugging into an outlet or charging station. The result is that many fleets of Chevy Volts are coming in with an average of between 34 and 39 MPG, whereas many non-fleet owners regular achieve over 450 miles to a gallon of gas, as long as they recharge regularly. The savings add up too; to charge a Chevy Volt costs about $1.50 in electricity, and it nominally covers the cost of a gallon of gasoline, which depending on where you live is between $3.00 and $4.00 a gallon.

How can we change this? That’s a sticky question, as people still need to feel fairly compensated for the costs of driving. One suggestion would be to offer a substantial “savings bonus” to whomever used the least amount of fuel in a given time period. The bonus would have to be large enough to incentivize people to go a little bit out of their way to find EV charging stations or other places to plug in, but the cost savings to the parent company could be huge. It’s just a matter of incentivizing employees to do the right thing.

Source: Gas 2.