Great news for anyone thinking about buying an electric vehicle: The U.S. Treasury has announced that it is expanding its definition of "SUV" in order to make more electric vehicle purchases eligible for a $7,500 tax credit.
The original $7,500 tax credit, which is part of the Inflation Reduction Act, would not have applied to several electric vehicle models including the Tesla Model Y, Cadillac Lyriq, Ford Mustang Mach-E, and Volkswagen ID.4 because they were priced too high to qualify as cars, sedans, or wagons, but weighed too little to be classified as SUVs.
Under the new rules, electric cars, sedans, and wagons can qualify for the tax credit if they are priced under $55,000, while electric SUVs qualify if they are priced under $80,000. Now that the guidelines for what an SUV is have been changed by the weight requirement being lowered, all of the models listed above qualify.
This is good news for electric car manufacturers and their customers, as one hurdle that was standing in the way of consumers claiming those tax credits has been removed.
And it's not the only good news on the electric vehicle front in recent months. A recent study showed that the majority of households that had bought an electric vehicle were happy enough with their purchase to buy a second one.
In Detroit, a company called Electreon Wireless is developing a road that charges electric cars as they drive over it, a version of which already exists in Sweden, Germany, Israel, and Italy.
With technological advancements like this one, the concerns about an electric car running out of charge are increasingly becoming a thing of the past (combined with the fact that the ranges on these cars are becoming bigger and bigger).
Not only that, but another recent study showed that even dogs prefer electric vehicles to gas-powered ones. The smoother rides and decreased road noise and vibrations in the electric cars led the dogs to be more relaxed, lessening the risk of car sickness.
It seems that on the electric vehicle front, all news is good news these days.
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