“The Texas Light-Duty Motor Vehicle Purchase or Lease Incentive Program (LDPLIP) has been renewed for another two years (but, it ain’t gonna last very long).”
I posted that on September 6th and now it’s gone.
The Texas’ Commission for Environmental Quality (TCEQ) program provided rebates of $2,500 for electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and $5,000 rebates for compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquified natural gas (LNG) vehicles. Yes, reduced emissions vehicles get twice the rebate of zero emission vehicles. Those $5,000 rebates are still available, as demand has never been as strong for the CNG/LNG vehicle rebate as it has for the rebate for EVs. Of course, to do the most environmental good, all the funds should be available for all the vehicle types covered. The public should decide how to allocate the funds when they decide which vehicle type they’d prefer. The program rules state that if there are any funds left, at the end of August, 2027, they will revert to the state, instead of helping to improve Texas air quality.
Such is the state of politics in Texas.
Although, in previous iterations, the program used to last more than 2 years, as I stated on my blog on September 6th, you needed to act quickly to get the rebate. The program was announced on September 6th, TCEQ did not begin accepting applications until October 13th. The EV rebate funding was depleted by December 10th. That means the rebate ran out of money (for electric vehicles, at least) in just 57 days!
What changed were several factors:
- EV adoption has been increasing in Texas at a rate that saw EV registrations double every 18 months. Today, there are over 452,000 EVs on Texas’ roads. (Even after the end of the federal $7,500 tax credit for EVs, the registrations are still doubling in Texas every 2 years.)
- Previously, only vehicles sold by dealerships were eligible for the rebate, meaning owners of Rivians, Lucids, Teslas, etc. weren’t competing for the funds. The last two times the program’s run, the dealership restriction has been eliminated.
- The anti-EV propaganda has started to fail in its effectiveness, as drivers discover the benefits of electric transportation for themselves.
That last point should have been foreseen by all of us, thanks to Consumer Reports. Consumer Reports performs an annual vehicle owners survey to determine the reliability and customer satisfaction across all models and brands. What CR discovered was that personal experience with EVs dramatically reduced driver resistance to them from 40% to just 4%. Even just seeing them in their neighborhood dropped the percentage of drivers with a negative EV opinion from 40% to 22%! That’s almost cutting resistance in half. *pun intended*) It sounds like the stuff we’ve been telling you about EVs may have just been true…
Another, more folksy way to say this is that “the proof is in the pudding.”
The good news is that Texas EV Alliance will continue to work diligently to persuade the Legislature to reinstate the program, when it reconvenes in 2027 or, failing that, to get funding for residential EV chargers, residential energy storage, vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-grid hardware or other programs that help Texans step into the new world.
You should join Texas EV Alliance.
