Cars aren’t sold based off what it costs, they’re priced off what people will pay.

All these credits do is let manufacturers raise the price by the same amount.

Like, we need to move to EVs, but all this does is funnel more money to the wealthy

I’m more a fan of sticks than carrots when it comes to stuff like this, but voters need coddling and this will still move the needle. Even assuming automakers capture the full $7500, that’s pure profit and they’re going to try very hard to sell more EVs. And thanks to the IRA, that manufacturing will happen in NA. You’re absolutely right that it’s a corporate subsidy disguised as a consumer tax break, but it will still have a real effect. I’d rather just have proper emissions requirements drive the change and have a carbon fee and dividend of course, but I think this scheme is still better than nothing.

It doesn’t have a real effect tho…

If they decide consumers will buy at X price, they’ll sell them for X and the people willing to spend X will buy it

If there’s a 7k tax credit, they’ll sell it for X+7k, and the same amount of consumers will pay X and buy the same amount of cars…

The only difference is everyone is paying their share of those 7k bonuses to manufacturers.

That tax money would be much better spent on infrastructure or public transport.