Electric trucks like Tesla Semi will get up to $40,000 in incentives with new bill

Electric trucks, like the Tesla Semi or Lion Electric trucks, will get up to $40,000 in incentives with the proposed new “Cut Inflation Act of 2022.”

Following the announcement of the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022” in the US Senate this week, the EV community understandably focused on federal EV tax credit reform; this will restore access to the incentive for Tesla and GM EV buyers. There are also plenty of other requirements that should make things interesting if the bill becomes law.

There are other aspects of the bill that relate to electric vehicles, but not consumer electric vehicles.

For example, there is a section for “clean commercial vehicles” which should apply to electric trucks. It offers up to $40,000 in incentives for clean commercial vehicles over 14,000 lbs:

The amount determined under this subsection in respect of any qualified clean commercial vehicle shall not exceed: ” (A) in the case of a vehicle whose gross vehicle weight rating is less than 14,000 pounds, $7,500, and (B) in the case of a vehicle not described in subparagraph (A), $40,000.

This is likely primarily aimed at encouraging sales of electric tractor-trailers like the Tesla Semi, Daimler’s Freightliner Cascadia, and even fuel-cell hydrogen electric trucks, like vehicles from Nikola Motors.

For example, Tesla lists the Tesla Semi starting at $150,000. At this price point, the electric vehicle already has a better operating cost per kilometer than diesel trucks, which dominate the trucking industry today.

A $40,000 incentive would bring the price down to $110,000 and make the cost per mile even more competitive; this will be the federal level if the Cut Inflation Act of 2022 passes, but there are also several incentives for commercial electric trucks in place at the state level in the US, in places like California for example .

However, this incentive mainly stimulates demand, which was already not a problem for electric trucks like the Tesla Semi, which has an order book of thousands of units.

Currently, the main problem with electric trucks is to increase production, both of the actual electric tractors and the batteries needed to build them, because each class electric semi-trailer would need five to 10 times more battery cells than an average electric car.

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