The EV Tax Credit is Dead, Now What?

[00:00:21] Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving, and much, much more. My name is Bodhi and I am your host and on today's episode we have got some news. But before we jump into our news, let's go ahead and thank the folks who were sponsoring this particular episode. And they are Chip, Dale, Don F., Cameron, and Bike Swimmer. Thank you all for supporting this episode of Kilowatt.

[00:00:49] I hope it lives up to your expectations. If you would like to join these and other fine folks, you can go to supportkilowatt.com and on that page it'll have links to our Supercast page as well as our Patreon. All the money that our patrons contribute go back into making the show better. None of the money goes back into my pocket to pay bills or anything like that. I have a job. The Patreon just helps pay for the show.

[00:01:17] Again, thanks to Chip, Dale, Don, Cameron, and Bike Swimmer.

[00:01:23] All right, let's start the show. Lucid Motors has three affordable EVs on the way. These vehicles are going to be built on Lucid's new midsize platform, which is in the pipeline. Two of these vehicles will launch close together, a sedan and a crossover, and the third vehicle will follow shortly after that. We don't have an exact timeline or we don't even really know more about what the third vehicle will be.

[00:01:51] The sedan and crossover, we do have some information on Lucid's delivery should start sometime in late 2026. And the starting price will be around $50,000. Now, I would imagine that we hear something soon in terms of announcements from Lucid, maybe at the end of the year or the beginning of 2026, on what that sedan and crossover vehicle will look like.

[00:02:17] I happen to think that Lucid designs and builds beautiful cars that the technology in their cars, I think, is a little bit underrated. I don't think they get enough credit for what they do. Like, I think the auto industry or the automotive news gives them credit. But in general, I don't think Lucid does a good enough job of marketing how good their cars are.

[00:02:41] You know, Peter Rawlinson used to say stuff like they're the best, most technically advanced. I'm not going to do a Peter Rawlinson voice. I think it's a good enough.

[00:03:18] the money to spend on a $70,000 or $80,000 car, all the way up to a $250,000 car. Speaking of $70,000 to $80,000 cars and all the way up to $100,000 plus cars, I guess, Rivian has laid off 140 employees recently, and that's where I kind of loosely tied in the price of the cars. Scout Motors is actually seeing this as an opportunity to add some of

[00:03:48] those folks to its workforce. So Jacoby Marzetti, hopefully I said that right, Jacoby, the head of logistics at Scout Motors, is inviting the folks that were laid off to apply to positions at Scout Motors. Now, obviously, not everybody will apply, and everybody who does apply from Rivian won't get a job, but I think this is a pretty cool opportunity for folks who worked at Rivian to move over to Scout because they're doing something really similar at Scout

[00:04:16] at maybe, you can argue, a little bit more affordable scale than what Rivian was doing, but we'll see because Scout, you know, they came out and they said their vehicles would be, you know, just under $60,000. We'll see if they can actually hit that target or not. But overall, I'm happy to see when folks get laid off, there's a potential place for them

[00:04:39] to land comfortably. I've got some other real quick Rivian news to mention. Rivian received another billion dollars from Volkswagen Group. This comes from their joint venture. So I think that's the second billion that they've received this year and a total of somewhere around five, five and a half billion dollars that they're supposed to receive from Volkswagen. So it sounds like the Volkswagen

[00:05:06] Rivian partnership is going well and Rivian is delivering on what it said it would deliver on. Otherwise, they wouldn't be getting this money. In terms of deliveries, Rivian delivered 10,661 vehicles in Q2 2025, which is down 23% year over year. You know, one of the bits of these automakers, at least U.S. automakers having down quarters, I don't think is getting enough attention is the fact

[00:05:33] that interest rates are really high right now. I went to Bank of America's website and looked for auto loans and a 60 month auto loan term, which is I don't think too crazy. I think that's a probably an average length of time, five years, a new car, it'll cost you 5.64% for a new car, 5.84% for a used

[00:05:58] car in your percentage rate. If you want to refinance your car, it's 6.24%. And if you want to buy out your lease, it's 6.24%. So interest rates right now are very high. And I'm wondering, you know, that's got to play a part in some of these down numbers. Now, I know that it's not the only part, but it's something that I think is being underreported a little bit. I do know that GM and other

[00:06:25] automakers and Tesla are offering, and Rivian are offering really good lease deals. And some of them are offering like GM finances, offering some good rates. But overall, you know, if you're going out to buy a car and you don't qualify for those really good rates, you're going to pay a pretty penny in interest. So just thought I would mention that. Actually, I don't think I wrote this down, but I was

[00:06:49] going to a friend of mine. I read an article that like one in five auto loans right now are over $1,000 a month for a monthly payment, which seems insane to me. But there we go. That's where we're living right now. Next up, let's talk about some EV myths. And I actually pulled this information from Clean Technica, but Clean Technica used a couple of different sources in their article.

[00:07:15] So I'm going to, I'll just call out the original post where that came from at the beginning of each myth. There's only two. First up is from The Guardian. A recent article in The Guardian claims that EVs may cause more motion sickness than their gas counterparts. And this is mostly due to regenerative

[00:07:39] breaking. There's actually a kernel of truth to this myth. According to researcher William Emond, the motion sickness comes down to this just being a new sensory experience and it takes some time to adjust. So studies suggest there are two main culprits. Like I said, the unfamiliar motion cues and regenerative braking. So that's, that's one side of it. The other side is that it's lacking,

[00:08:08] you know, that vibration that an ice car has or the engine noise, like revving. When you hear the motor rev up, your brain is like, oh, well, the car is going to speed up. And when you slow down, you can hear it shifting down in gears and that kind of thing. So that, that your body's kind of in tune to how those gas powered cars work. Whereas in an EV, you know, you can be going, you know, 20 miles an hour. And the next thing you know, you're going 60 miles an hour fairly quickly.

[00:08:38] And there, you don't have those same cues that you would in, in, in a gas car. Now, over time, bodies, most bodies would say will come, uh, we'll get used to this and it won't be such a big deal, but it can catch new EV drivers or people who are riding EVs for the first time off guard. And it's not that EVs will always make somebody feel motion sick. It could just make them

[00:09:07] feel different. You know, they're just, that they're just not used to that feeling. So they may feel a little bit of woozy or they just may feel off. Uh, this is far from an epidemic, but I do, I do know somebody who, when they ride in an EV, they do feel motion sick if they're in the car for any length of time. And some of that has to do with like where the car lines up with their eyeline

[00:09:31] when, when, like, as they're seeing the horizon pass by or, or the landscape pass by some of that kind of helps or not helps, but some of that makes them car sick. And the other is the way that the car speeds up and slows down can make them car sick as well. So, and for that reason that they're not huge fans of EVs, um, the other EV myth, and this one is a really silly one. And this

[00:09:56] is according to auto glim, which is like a, from what I can tell, they're a UK company that sells like detail supplies, like car wash and wax and things like that. They wrote an op-ed piece for another site that, uh, I did not write down at the moment, but I'd like you to just take a second. I'm going to ask you a question, take a second in your brain and guess what percentage of UK drivers think that

[00:10:22] you can get shocked while washing an EV? The answer is 21% of UK drivers surveyed think they'll be shocked while washing an EV. Now the article goes to break down this by age group. And I was really

[00:10:42] surprised at this. So folks who are 55 to 64, and then again, this is, this is a guessing game for us. What percentage of folks who are 45 or 55 to 64 think that they'll get shocked by washing an EV? The answer is 8% of a fairly low number. I would expect that this number to be much higher.

[00:11:05] And then we have folks who are 25 to 34. What percentage do you think of that age group thinks they're going to get shocked for, by washing an EV? The answer is 46% according to their numbers, which seems like an insane number. Like you'd think people in that age group are fairly familiar with what EVs can and can't do. And then that leads us to 18 to 24, the age group of 18 to 24.

[00:11:35] What percentage? 40%. So the younger folks think more are more likely to think that you can get shocked just by washing your EV. The article breaks down things even further, like places where you lived. One of the things I thought was interesting is 45% of car owners in London believe that they can be shocked by washing their EVs,

[00:12:00] while only 7% of people in Wales believe that they can be shocked. And there you go. Honestly, I was very surprised that there are people out there who still think that you can get shocked just by washing an EV. And those numbers seem very high to me. But again, those are just the people who were surveyed. And we don't know what the, how scientific their survey was, but I thought it was interesting.

[00:12:29] And there's clearly some people out there who think you can get shocked just by washing your EV. 30 Jahre Telekom. Und nur für kurze Zeit setzen wir noch einen drauf. Alle Smartphones gibt's jetzt in vielen Tarifen für nur einen Euro, zum Beispiel das iPhone 16. Und wenn du einen neuen Vertrag abschließt, legen wir nochmal bis zu 240 Euro Cashback obendrauf. Nur bei der Telekom.

[00:13:03] Okie doke, that completes our EV news. Let's go ahead and move on to our Tesla segment of the show. Just have a couple of Tesla updates here. Nothing too terribly long. First up, Elon thinks that RoboTaxi safety monitors can be removed in a month or two, according to a June 30th post that he made on X. And I will say I would not hold your breath on that.

[00:13:30] We talked about new rules for autonomous vehicles going in place in Texas in September. And we'll see how that affects not only Tesla, but all of the companies, autonomous driving companies that are operating in Texas. If you own a Tesla in the United States or Canada, you now have a buy now, pay later option when it comes to servicing your car.

[00:13:58] So you can basically, if you don't know what buy now, pay later is, it's kind of like a credit card. You can pay over time. And this is for maintenance and repairs. And these buy now, pay later services, for Tesla anyway, are provided by a firm or Klarna. And it kind of depends on where you live, which one you're going to get offered. But I think this is a good thing. You know, auto repairs can just be stupidly expensive.

[00:14:26] Like we had to get my wife's van repaired recently and we're probably going to have to get it repaired again. And I can tell you from experience, it is there. It's a stupid amount of money, even if you don't go to a dealer to get these cars repaired. So I think for folks who need a repair, but it might be a burden to pay that all up at one all up front. This is a good option. All right.

[00:14:56] The big, beautiful bill passed the House and the Senate and President Trump signed it into law yesterday on July 4th. This is the this is basically the budget. This is what the United States is prioritizing spending money on or not spending money on for the next year. Some things in the bill that are going into effect do affect the EV industry.

[00:15:20] I did see some articles about how it's going to affect regulatory credits. But I when I looked into those articles, it seemed like it wasn't clear if it would affect regulatory credits. So I don't know. I don't feel comfortable talking about that as we get into more of these earnings calls. Tesla's earnings calls on July 23rd, I believe. And they start talking about regulatory credits.

[00:15:46] We'll hear more about how the bill will affect that or the new law, I guess, will affect that. But. For now, we do know that the seventy five hundred dollar federal tax credit is going away at the end of September, September 30th. And I know that some people are. I know that some people think this is a bad thing, that it's going away. And certainly it's not going to.

[00:16:13] It's for somebody who wants to buy an EV or a plug in hybrid. It's not it's not great news if you want to get seventy five hundred dollars off the purchase of that vehicle. But on the other side, I don't think this is going to have a huge impact on EV sales. Could be wrong. We'll see. It'll take a year, I think, before we'll really know. But I don't think it's going to be as big of a deal as people think it is.

[00:16:40] It's definitely going to be a bummer for those who buy an EV after September 30th, like October 1st. You're going to feel real bummed about that. But if you, you know, as the as it gets further away from that September 30th date, I don't think people are going to. I don't think it's going to be that big of a deal, but I do think if somebody is looking to buy an EV in the next six months, they might speed that purchase up.

[00:17:06] So that's why I'm saying we'll have to look at this in a year to see really what that effect has on the EV industry here in the United States. This next story is more of a clarification than it is anything else. Just like everything right now, man, the articles, whether it's politics, EVs, technology, the headlines for these articles are just so hyperbolic sometimes.

[00:17:33] I saw several articles that said that the Model Y is no longer the best selling car in the world. And that is true. It looks like it's true. The Toyota RAV4 has taken that mantle or taken that title. And that's that's fine, you know. But it was a it was a close race. The RAV4 outsold the Model Y somewhere between, you know, it's either it's a more than 2000 units.

[00:18:02] It's in less than 3000 units globally. We I've seen different numbers, but it looks like it was by a margin. They outsold them by a margin of 0.16 percent. So it was really close. Like Tesla is still selling plenty of Model Ys. Again, we talked about last episode how those numbers are down for sure. But I just I just found these hyperbolic articles so frustrating.

[00:18:29] Like, I can't tell you, I had 36 articles in my queue to go over for this show. And I and I was able to pare everything down. And I only had three left over after I deleted stuff and put stuff in for the show. But a lot of those articles, when you actually read the article versus you read the headline, not exactly the same thing. I was like, man, this this article predicts doom and gloom.

[00:18:59] And it's not even really a story. So some of that is not some of it. All of that is very frustrating to me. Moving on, Tesla is close to completing their lithium iron phosphate cell factory in Sparks, Nevada. You know, there's a lot of reasons why Tesla would want to build a cell factory in the United States. But I think probably the biggest one, at least recently, is to avoid tariffs that could be as high as 80 percent.

[00:19:29] But these cells are not expected to go into EVs. These cells are expected to go into Tesla's Megapacks for energy storage. Although I would not be surprised if, you know, the Terra4 heats back up again. If Tesla doesn't pull some of these cells from the Tesla Megapack and put them into the cars. But for right now, it looks like they're slated for the Megapacks. All right.

[00:19:58] I'm super stoked about this next story. Tesla has begun the internal testing of its virtual queuing system for superchargers. And public testing is the next step. So we're getting really close. And if you're not familiar with the virtual queuing system is, here's how it works. So you're driving in your Tesla and you're like, you know what? I need to charge. So you navigate to a supercharger. When you enter in and you navigate to that supercharger, not only does it start conditioning

[00:20:28] your battery, you'll also start you'll also automatically be placed into a virtual queue once you arrive. Not when you say, I'm going to head towards the supercharger. Once you arrive at the supercharger, you'll be placed in a virtual line. And your position will be displayed on the screen of your Tesla with an estimated wait time.

[00:20:53] And when your stall is free, you'll receive instructions on which stall to report to. This is going to work in a similar way. If you don't own a Tesla, but you want to charge at a supercharger network, you'll just have to use the app. And I don't know that Tesla's released the full details on how that will work for non Tesla's charging at a supercharger. But I would imagine it's going to be similar, maybe a little bit more inconvenient, but it's still be better than, you know, somebody pulling out of a spot and a bunch of people

[00:21:23] jockeying to try and get into that one spot so that they can charge. I love this idea for the virtual queue. Now, I have a couple of questions. The first is, what if you're towing something? You know, Tesla now has a lot of pull through or at least one in almost every supercharger that I've been to recently. They'll have at least one pull through station so that if you are pulling something, you can charge your vehicle that way.

[00:21:52] They also have different configurations on how they stagger the superchargers because, you know, not everybody has the charge port in the same place that a Tesla does. And that accommodates a, you know, different vehicles having that staggered that way. I wonder if the Tesla software is going to be like, oh, you have an Ionic 5. You can only charge at stalls 6, 9 and 12. And if you have an F-150 Lightning, you can only charge at stalls 12 and 13.

[00:22:22] And if you're towing something, you should be able to say, hey, I'm towing something. And it just kind of puts you in line for that pull through charging spot. Another thing I'm curious about is what if you just get that one person that decides to skip the line altogether and pull into a spot that they're not assigned to? And what happens then? I think I have a really good solution for this.

[00:22:48] The first thing is, is that you politely notify them that they have mistakenly entered a spot that they are not reserved for. So they need to move. So the person who is actually reserved for that spot can charge up. If they refuse to do that, that's great. Notify them again that you're going to charge them five times what the rate is to charge. And then whoever spot that they took, they get to charge for free.

[00:23:16] So the person who is stepping out of line and maybe being a little bit of a jerk is punished for it, but they can continue and pay more and still charge their vehicle if they really think they're in that big of a hurry. The person who is inconvenienced by not getting that spot and having to be bumped down the line, they get free charging. And the person who just pulls into a spot because they don't know any better,

[00:23:44] they get warned that, hey, this is not how we do things here anymore. You need to get out of line. And, you know, I think after you've paid five times what it costs to charge your car at a supercharger one time, you won't, you'll follow the rules the next time. And if you're really in a hurry, again, if you value your time that much and it's okay for you to spend $70 or $80 on a charge, you can do that.

[00:24:10] And you're doing somebody else a favor, I guess, by paying for their charge too. All right, everybody, that is it for me today. If you want to email me, it's bodie, B-O-D-I-E at 918digital.com. You can also find me on X at 918digital. I'm on LinkedIn at Bodie Grimm. If you want to look for me there, you'll see my picture in black and white with my stupid bald head and my stupid face.

[00:24:39] So you can follow me there if you want. I'll also reply to messages on LinkedIn. And I think that's it. I hope everybody had a happy and safe 4th of July. I will talk to you next week.

[00:25:15] 30 Jahre Telekom. Und nur für kurze Zeit setzen wir noch einen drauf. Alle Smartphones gibt's jetzt in vielen Tarifen für nur einen Euro. Und wenn du einen neuen Vertrag abschließt, legen wir nochmal bis zu 240 Euro Cashback obendrauf. Nur bei der Telekom.