EV tax credit expires today and Amazon to announce new hardware

ABC's Mike Dobuski has the latest tech news including how consumers habits will change after the expiration of the EV tax credit

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Over on the Legacy Retirement Group dot Com phone line.
I always enjoy speaking with Mike Debuski, ABC News Technology
Reporter Tech Tuesday and the last day of Tech Timber. Mike,
I'm so sad. Maybe we can get into tech Tober
next month, but today it's the the last day for
the EV tax credit, and people in some areas are
scrambling to go get that new electric vehicle today, to

(00:23):
get that seventy five hundred bucks.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yes, certainly so. Today, as I said, the last day
for this long running federal program that basically incentivized people
to buy new electric vehicles. Now, the shape of this
program has changed since two thousand and eight when it
was first introduced, but as it stands today, at least
for the next couple hours, you can claim up to
seventy five hundred dollars off the cost of a new

(00:45):
electric vehicle end up to four thousand dollars off the
cost of a used EV, So a pretty hefty chunk
could change. And how much of that rebate you could
get depended on things like where the battery was made,
how much of the battery was made in the United States,
where the car itself saw its final assembly, was that
in the US was it somewhere else? And it also

(01:05):
depended on the purchase price of the car. Only cars
that were electric that were under fifty five thousand dollars
could take advantage of this credit, and for trucks and
SUVs that cap was an eighty thousand dollars, so it
really applied to sort of the more mass market vehicles
out there. The credit is going away today after Congress
failed to renew this under the Big Beautiful Bill Act,

(01:27):
which was passed by Congress earlier this year. We are
getting some data looking into exactly how popular this program was,
and it does appear to be somewhat popular. An analysis
from lending Tree this month found that in twenty twenty
three alone, car buyers saved about three point three billion
dollars California accounting to accounting for about a third of

(01:47):
those claims, they took about one point one billion dollars
in savings. Ohio guys ranked seventeenth among the fifty states,
so in the top half here and digging into the
numbers four oh high. Specifically, the average money that average
buyer got back on an electric vehicle. This is again
for new cars, was about sixty eight hundred dollars, so

(02:09):
you know, they took most advantage of it. The majority
of the money that you could get back. Ohioan's did
get back, and on average, federally across the country it
was about sixty seven hundred dollars, So you guys saved
yourself an extra hundred bucks.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
There you go. Yeah, is the price of the price
of evs coming down in general, Mike, as far as
you know.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
So no firm numbers here, but in general, yes, we
are absolutely seeing kind of you know, the cost of
these cars start to come down. Anyway, Nissan recently introduced
a new version of the Leaf, which for a long
time was the best selling electric vehicle in the world,
and that really was kind of the bell Weather. This
car is supposed to retail for around thirty to thirty

(02:50):
five thousand dollars. That is twenty thousand dollars cheaper than
the average cost of a new car in the US.
And you can get a pretty high mile nicely appoint
it nice ish looking electric vehicle for that amount of money.
So yeah, we are seeing sort of economies of scale
at work here, the cost of these cars start to
come down. There are concerns however, that once this federal

(03:12):
credit goes away, we are going to see a shift
in people's buying habits, maybe moving back towards internal combustion
cars or hybrid cars. That is kind of just part
and parcel of this credit going away, because sixty seven
hundred dollars sixty eight hundred dollars up to seventy five
hundred dollars is a pretty hefty chunk of change, and
once that goes away, that means that the cars are

(03:34):
going to get more expensive. One loophole to point out here, guys,
that is important is that the IRS says that if
you have already signed a binding contract on a car
and made a down payment, you can still take advantage
of this credit going forward. It's just got to be
done by today. So if you're some of the way
into buying a new car, it's not like things are
going to get really expensive for you starting tomorrow. But

(03:57):
you know, that is kind of an edge case, but
it is an important for people who are in the
process of buying a car right now.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
The cost of an EV was prohibitive for a lot
of people, so that the credit certainly helped a lot
of folks. Also stayed away because of the battery range
in these vehicles and you know, the infrastructure for charging.
Any updates on that. Are we seeing the range of
evs grow a little bit, and are we seeing more

(04:23):
charging facilities and more charging stations pop up to kind
of alleviate some of these concerns for folks.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, absolutely, And this has been a trend really since
the genesis of the electric vehicle, going back to that
first generation Nissan Leaf, you would be hard pressed to
find one that got more than one hundred miles of range,
and that really is just prohibitive for most people, right
you can't go more than fifty miles away from your
home without needing a charge. And then of course when
you go to a public charger, oftentimes people say they

(04:51):
didn't work, or they were kind of in a dingy
part of town or what have you. So now fast
forward in fifteen years or so, these the new electric
Leafs that are coming out are closer to two hundred
and fifty three hundred miles of range. I was in
a Cadillac Escalade, which admittedly is a high range electric vehicle,
but that had up to four hundred and fifty miles

(05:14):
of range, So at the top end of the market.
We're seeing these huge numbers. I believe right now Lucid
actually claims the crown for this particular deal. They're more
than five hundred miles of range in some of their
battery configurations. But again, a very premium sort of luxury
vehicle there. You can expect that to trickle down to
kind of more mainstream evs going forward. But yeah, we

(05:35):
are starting to see those range numbers creep up as
prices are creeping down. Let me just take you with
some more numbers here. Guys. Cox Automotive estimates that EV
sales will hit about four hundred and ten thousand this
quarter in the US. That's up more than twenty percent
since this time last year, the third quarter of twenty
twenty four. It also means that about ten percent of

(05:56):
the new car market is electric at this point. But again,
once this credit go away, the expectation is that things
are going to reverse. We're already seeing Ford and General
Motors start to offer financing incentives trying to preserve some
of that federal credit alleviation in terms of cost.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Interesting, we'll see what happens after today. Before we let
your fly, mic, there's a bunch of new gadgets coming
out today from Amazon. What are you previewing? Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Tech Timber rolls on again, if you'll forgive the word there.
This is the time of year when we see a
bunch of new gadgets from tech companies. Amazon's turn is
today in New York City. They're going to pull the
wraps off a bunch of new Alexa devices. Sorry to
everyone who's voice assistant I just activated there. There is
a new version of Alexa though it's called Alexa Plus.
It's got a bunch of new AI features in it

(06:42):
that Amazon wants people to interact with. It has been
a while since we've seen an update to the Base
Echo smart speaker and the Echo Show. The show is
the one with the screen in it, so we are
expecting a refresh of those two devices. Could also see
a new Kindle. The higher end Kindles got refreshes earlier
this year, so now it is the turn of the
Base Kindle, which could be updated today. Your usual bevy

(07:06):
of updates to the Fire TV, the Ring camera, as
well the sort of video doorbell feature that Amazon offers
Tech companies like September guys, as we've been saying all month.
A lot of new product announcements around this time of year,
ahead of the holiday shopping season. In that spirit, mark
your calendars. Next Tuesday is the next Amazon Prime Day.
It is their fall sales event, and you can expect

(07:29):
some of the stuff they show off today to be
discounted next week