Incentive Money Gone, Electric Car Sales Have Dried Up In Georgia

Electric car sales in Georgia have halted after that state stopped offering incentives and started charging a $200 annual fee to recoup lost gas tax revenue, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

New electric vehicle registrations plummeted 89 percent from June to August after the state stopped offering a $5,000 tax break on top of the $7,500 federal incentive. Georgia’s incentive was one of the most generous in the country.

Georgia’s electric purge could portend a future in highly incentivized states, such as California and Colorado, where electric incentives and sales are still relatively strong.

According to the International Council on Clean Transportation, countries with direct incentives (such as tax breaks, or one-time bonus payments) have considerably higher EV sales than countries without incentives, however that isn’t always universally true.

“A counter-example is the UK, where despite relatively high incentives electric vehicle sales are still very low,” Dr. Peter Mock, Managing Director of ICCT Europe, said in a statement.

Earlier this year, British Columbia announced it would bring back clean vehicle incentives after allowing the credit to expire in 2014 and sales exploding in other provinces. Sales of hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles rose in BC without the credit, but not as fast as sales in Quebec and Ontario.

A clean energy proponent in Atlanta said that while repealing the tax credit for EVs could save the state $66 million in 2016 and $190 million by 2020, but that spending on fuel would rise by more than $188 million over the next 16 years, lowering spending by consumers, according to a study by Keybridge Research.

“This important study shows that the ZEV credit is a smart investment for the state of Georgia, as well as Georgian consumers and businesses,” Robbie Diamond, President and CEO of Securing America’s Future Energy, said earlier this year according to Cleantechnica.