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Would you have bought or buy a Tesla without tax incentives?

Would you have bought or buy a Tesla without tax incentives?


  • Total voters
    142
  • Poll closed .
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Rebates were a huge consideration. I got a total of $15k in incentives. 2k off top line from Tesla Referral, $7500 Fed tax credit, $2500 CA rebate and $3000 county inventive. It definitely factored into it (and which options I picked).
 
So impressed by the poll results so far! You "Yeses" are 2 to 1 ahead of both Nos and Maybes. You all have some serious money to spend on cars. I know the tax credits are controversial to some but for me, I wouldn't have even considered an EV without them. The tax incentives did do what they're intended to do which is get people to buy EVs.
 
In my purchasing decision the Tax Incentive played a major role in the timing of my purchase. I'm pretty sure I would have eventually gotten a Tesla of some kind, but the Incentive certainly pushed me off the fence sooner than I normally would have gotten off.

See back in June the Sales Tax exemption was ending for new Electric cars sold in WA. The sales tax for cars where I live is darn near 10% so that was quite a bit of money.

I should add that I don't want any tax exemptions for electric cars. There are so much more useful things that money can go in order to improve the infrastructure for electric cars, and the way the incentives work really screws up used car pricing. People are getting the false sense that electric cars lose more value than ICE cars because of the exemption. A new car buyer knows he/she gets that money, and this forces the old car owner to lower the price to compete with the new car. So it essentially erases the money from the value of the car. In my case Tesla really got the $7500 and not me, but I got the money from the Sales Tax exemption (since it expired). Before that exemption expired any Tesla owner had to lower his/her price of the car to factor in that since a new Tesla wouldn't have the sales tax.

Additionally it seems really silly to have an incentive, but then turn around and charge yearly fee's to account for the fact that there is no gas tax funds generated with electric cars.
 
Sorry to mess up your statistics with my YES. Maybe you should add an option for those who bought the car without any tax incentives available (none of those in Switzerland, except for not having to pay vehicle registration/road tax, roughly a $500/year saving).
 
Those that did not receive a direct incentive by purchasing used should not assume that they made a purchasing decision independent of government incentives. The market value of a given secondhand Tesla is affected by the incentives received when it was new. This effect is, of course, greatest when the car is "newer" - as most Model S's are today.

I believe I would have still bought (leased) the car without incentives - but it sure feels good to get a little bit back out of the pot!
 
Ontario gave me a $8,500 CAD rebate, which was a nice bonus, but it made no impact on the decision whatsoever. I have been driving 100% electric for 2 years before buying the Tesla, because back in 2012 I could not afford a Tesla, so bought the tiny iMiev, in that purchase the rebate did make a big difference. But for the Model S I paid $112K CAD and at that level the $8.5K is only 7.5% which does not alter anyone's ability to buy. You could easily drop that much off the price by giving up some options.

So, IMHO if you can afford a Model S with the incentive, then you could also afford it without.
Incentives matter for the low cost EVs only.
 
I got my car delivered on Dec 16, 2013 in order to take advantage of the $7500 tax credit but ended up not being able to use it due to deductions that had already reduced our taxes. So, trying to take advantage of the incentive got me to order sooner than later, which was a benefit. The best driving experience of my life.
 
Sorry to mess up your statistics with my YES. Maybe you should add an option for those who bought the car without any tax incentives available (none of those in Switzerland, except for not having to pay vehicle registration/road tax, roughly a $500/year saving).
Sorry I can't seem to change the poll - if anyone knows how, let me know. In any case, I was more interested in knowing whether people would have bought a Tesla with or w/o the tax incentives which some people pointed out that this poll is US-centric. Apologies for those of our non-US friends who felt left out. Regardless, if you didn't have a tax incentive, I guess your decision did not take those in consideration.

Regarding the Swiss "incentive", it is odd they don't charge for vehicle registration and road tax. Our state, Colorado, as well as other states mentioned by other posters are actually trying to recoup the cost to infrastructure by charging EV fees that ICE vehicles don't have to pay. I can see this logic since the gas taxes pay for infrastructure upkeep which benefits all cars, not just ICE vehicles.

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So, IMHO if you can afford a Model S with the incentive, then you could also afford it without.
Incentives matter for the low cost EVs only.
I have to disagree... the total benefit to me in tax reduction is $13500. That's a 16% reduction from the price of the Tesla that I am getting (70D with AP and Premium). Granted, it's not the highest end model but I wouldn't have even considered a Tesla without the state+fed tax credits. To that end, for me, the substantial savings with the credits allowed me to afford something I would have considered out of my league. Yes I could've gotten a Leaf or such for a lot less but I wouldn't have that Tesla grin everyone speaks of!

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I got my car delivered on Dec 16, 2013 in order to take advantage of the $7500 tax credit but ended up not being able to use it due to deductions that had already reduced our taxes. So, trying to take advantage of the incentive got me to order sooner than later, which was a benefit. The best driving experience of my life.
Such a bummer! It will be interesting to know how many Tesla Ses actually get the credit claimed. So even when Tesla builds their 200K Model S, that could mean people with VIN 2XXXXX could potentially get the fed tax savings. I wonder how they'll know?
 
No incentives of any form available to me in Canada, so yes, I definitely would have bought with out them, in fact I did.

With our new government that may change, but I highly doubt it. I'm actually waiting for the opposite, I think it's far more likely they'll add an extra tax to EV purchases here to offset the gas tax we're not paying (and to penalize us for being forward thinking...)
 
I have been driving 100% electric for 2 years before buying the Tesla, because back in 2012 I could not afford a Tesla, so bought the tiny iMiev, in that purchase the rebate did make a big difference. But for the Model S I paid $112K CAD and at that level the $8.5K is only 7.5% which does not alter anyone's ability to buy. <snip>Incentives matter for the low cost EVs only.

+1

I bought my 2013 Smart ED and part of the decision was the incentive in Ontario, reducing the price to $19K after taxes (all in). It made it easy to justify selling a gas car that I had long paid off and was still running well.

The Tesla was bought CPO, so someone else got the incentive before me, and did not factor in my decision, and was unlikely to factor in his, as he leased through his (successful) company.
 
I haven't bought yet, though it's likely I won't be using the entire $7500 incentive when I buy. I have never owed as much as $7500 in income tax (though 2016 has been my best income year yet), so it's unlikely I will be using the entire credit. Washington state had a deal where EVs were free from sales tax, but that was discontinued on cars costing over $35,000 in July. The sales tax break would have been more than the federal incentive, it's over 8% in most of the state and only a tad below that in a few counties.