With prices for EVs now dropping to a competitive level in MA, and a major uptick in EV purchases last year, the State has decided to end its $1500 rebate program through MOR-EV. While unfortunate for those of us that would love an extra fifteen hundred dollars to shave off on an electric vehicle purchase, the truth is we don’t necessarily need it anymore. Local dealers in Massachusetts, such as Quirk Chevy in Braintree, offer their Bolt EVs for as low as $24,745 before any state or federal incentives. Customers of HMLP can also get $5,000 off a Nissan LEAF. The Bolt and LEAF are just two of around a dozen plug in electrics you can buy locally for under $25k, not including the state rebate. As the technology for building EVs (electric vehicle) improves, the price will continue to go down.
There is movement in Capitol Hill to extend the Federal tax incentives, which could raise the Tesla and Chevy incentives back up to $7500, but we shouldn’t hold out breath just yet.
An EV saves the average driver over $1,000 on fuel and maintenance in the first year, or over $5,000 in just the first 5 years of driving. That’s far more than the outgoing $1,500 state incentive. Fuel costs and vehicle maintenance savings can exponentially increase the money you save for owning an EV. This is especially true in Hingham, where if you own an EV you can sign up for the Hingham Drives Electric “Dollar a Gallon” EV Rewards program, which provides a $5 or $10 a month bill credit for charging your vehicle between the hours of 10pm and 12pm the next day during weekdays!
Even with the loss of the state incentive, the cost of ownership for an EV is drastically lower, and when there are EV programs like the ones offered by HMLP ( https://hmlp-ev.ene.org/ ) that just becomes icing on the cake.
