Several major auto companies are rushing to enlist dealers in programs that would effectively extend the $7,500 electric vehicle (EV) tax credit and help secure buyers before it sunsets on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
Ford and General Motors (GM) have reportedly launched programs for their dealerships in which the company’s financing arm makes down payments on EVs, according to Reuters. While the Biden administration pushed for EVs through tax credits and allowed California to effectively impose a national de facto EV mandate, Congress and President Donald Trump have blocked the mandate and slashed many federal EV incentives.
Some energy sector experts, including Energy & Environment Legal Institute Senior Fellow Steve Milloy, argue the companies are rushing to secure the tax credit.
“It is outrageous that Ford and GM are scheming to defraud taxpayers by conspiring with their own franchisee car dealers to ‘purchase’ their own EVs by the end of today in order to capture the $7,500 tax credit that is expiring,” Milloy told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The IRS should deny the tax credits pending Trump Department of Justice investigation of this manipulative self-dealing.”
“Ford is working to provide Ford electric vehicle shoppers with competitive lease payments on retail leases through Ford Credit until December 31st,” a Ford spokesperson confirmed to the DCNF.
GM did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment, though a spokesperson told Reuters on Monday that “we worked with our GM dealers on an extended offer for customers to benefit from the tax credit for leases.”
Several energy sector experts explained to the DCNF that the long-standing tax credit expanded and extended under the Biden administration distorted markets and did not benefit the average consumer. Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July, which terminated the tax credit and set its phase-out in motion.
“This subsidy propped up demand for vehicles consumers didn’t want, while gas-powered cars were punished through backdoor regulations like the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) penalties, which were zeroed out in the One Big Beautiful Bill,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the DCNF. “With these incentives vanishing, it marks a ceremonial end to the federal EV mandate. The market can finally begin to correct itself, and the American auto industry can start to heal. Washington shouldn’t be picking winners and losers, and after years of failed top-down mandates, consumers are finally back in the driver’s seat.”
Auto companies have been rushing to sell EVs, seeking to clear inventory before consumers lose access to the $7,500 tax credit. GM announced that EV sales “likely set an all-time monthly record” in August as consumers raced to secure the sunsetting tax credits.
“The tax credits were, from the outset, nothing more than welfare for the well-to-do, with the vast majority of the vehicles sold and tax credits claims going to people in the highest income brackets,” Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute Sterling Burnett told the DCNF. “There is no reason average folks, who sensibly continued to purchase and reliable fossil fuel powered vehicles, should be helping the rich purchase boutique, high-tech vehicles, many of which serve as second cars.
“The rich never needed the credits to purchase EVs, and the credits still didn’t make them affordable to lower income people,” Burnett continued. “This is the kind of boondoggle we’ve come to expect from big government interventions in the market, trying to steer peoples’ choices to politically favored companies.”
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