California is set to reinstate funding for a subsidy that incentivizes electric vehicle purchases, but state legislators are divided over who should qualify for the program.
Historically, everyone who purchased an electric vehicle could be eligible for the rebate. Recently, there has been some debate over whether that’s appropriate.
Gov. Gavin Newsom tried to propose a significant change, limiting those who were eligible to people with low or moderate incomes. That proposition was dropped, but others have proposed cutting off the subsidy at an income level of around $150,000 per year.
"(On) the one hand, we want to encourage the move to electrification in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce local pollution that comes from vehicles," Severin Borenstein, Faculty Director of the Energy Institute at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, said Monday on KCBS Radio. "But on the other hand, we don't want to give money to relatively wealthy people who are gonna buy an electric vehicle anyway."
"There is no question that the overwhelming majority of these rebates have been going to relatively wealthy people," he added. "Those are the people buying electric vehicles."
Electric vehicles release far fewer greenhouse gases into the air than their gasoline-powered counterparts. Automobiles producer lots of local pollution and smog, and Borenstein said replacing older vehicles could go a long way toward cleaning air that is disproportionately a problem in low-income neighborhoods.
The UC Berkeley professor said it will take as long as 20 years before nearly all automobiles are electric.
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