If you buy an electric car, you can take advantage of discounts and tax credits. These financial incentives are sensitive to the time change from year to year. You will be offered first to "break the ice". While this article focuses on Los Angeles, you can start, about rebates and tax credits in the country.
People who call themselves "electric cars" or "Electric Vehicles" or "EV". I use the termsinterchangeable.
What financial incentives are available for the purchase of electric cars available? If you buy an electric car in 2011, you may be able to reduce the federal tax bill of $ 2.500 to $ 7.500 a tax credit. Other tax credits are also available. Convert your Prius or other non-plug-in hybrid, a plug-in is possible to reduce the federal tax bill of 10% of the cost of switching. The purchase of an electric bike or low speed "in the district" can reduce the electric trolleyFederal stamp duty up to $ 2,500.
Californians to buy an EV and acting quickly enough to a refund from the state up to $ 5,000 on an electric car and up to $ 20,000 to qualify for a commercial vehicle. Discounts apply to many types of electric vehicles, including all electric, hybrid, and low-speed motorcycle "in the district" wagons.
What discounts are available for the installation of an electrical charger? Electric cars are equipped with a charging cable as standard.This is called a "Level 1" charger. It charges an all-electric Nissan Leaf in about 20 hours and a hybrid Chevy Volt (which has an auxiliary gas-burning engine) in about 10 hours.
To charge your car faster, you need to buy and install a Level 2 charger in your garage or carport. A Level 2 charger works more than twice as fast as a Level 1 charger. With a Level 2 charger, you can easily take your electric vehicle from empty to full overnight. A homeowner who installs a Level 2 electric charger can receive a 2011 tax credit of 30% of the cost of the purchase and installation, with a cap of ,000. This means that you can reduce your 2011 tax bill by 30% of what you spent on purchase and installation of a Level 2 charger, up to a ,000 tax cut.
If you are a customer of the L.A. Department of Water and Power (LADWP), you may qualify for a ,000 rebate on installation of your electric charger. To qualify, you need to also install a separate electric meter for your new car. Ask your electrician to see if you will save money with this approach.
Does EV charging receive any special break in electric rates? In Los Angeles and many areas of the country, yes. In L.A., both Southern California Edison (SCE) and the Department of Water and Power (LADWP) offer special reduced rate plans for charging EVs at night, during off-peak hours.
Both power companies encourage people thinking of buying an EV or installing a charger to contact them. Call (800) DIAL-DWP or call SCE at (800) 4EV-INFO. SCE has extensive information on its website at http://www.sce.com/PowerandEnvironment/PEV/default.htm. Both companies are particularly interested in customer plans regarding EVs because they need information for planning power demand.
Are there any other incentives for electric car owners? Some states, like California, provide a sticker to qualifying electric car owners so that they can drive in freeway carpool lanes regardless of the number of occupants.
Where can I get more information? Here's a link to EDTA, an industry organization for electric transportation, http://goelectricdrive.com/Incentives.aspx where you can find out more about incentives in L.A. and also check out incentives for electric cars in other zip codes.
Why are governments and utilities offering financial incentives for purchasing electric cars? Driving an electric car, rather than a gas burner, is one of the best ways to wean our country off oil and to help the environment. We Americans use 60% of the oil that we consume in our vehicles. That's approximately the amount of oil that we import each year. So, if we stopped burning oil in our cars, we wouldn't need to import foreign oil. Electric cars also give us the ability to transition to clean and renewable sources of electric energy like solar and wind.
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