President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is planning to kill the $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric-vehicle purchases as part of broader tax-reform legislation, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
Ending the tax credit could have grave implications for an already stalling U.S. EV transition. And yet representatives of Tesla – by far the nation’s biggest EV maker – have told a Trump-transition committee they support ending the subsidy.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, one of Trump’s biggest backers and the world’s richest person, said in July that killing the subsidy might slightly hurt Tesla sales but would be “devastating” to its U.S. EV competitors, which include legacy automakers such as General Motors.
