“It’s baffling,” said Matt Jones, a Democratic state senator in Colorado, who opposes the move to repeal the tax credit. “It’s very counterproductive.” It is unclear how many of these measures will pass. In Colorado, for example, support for clean vehicles has long enjoyed bipartisan support. Still, the backward slide in incentives “is going to be a big issue and crash this market further,” said Jessica Caldwell, executive director for industry analysis at Edmunds.com. Even with the incentives, overall sales of electric vehicles are only about 1 percent of the American market. To start making a real dent in the market, Ms. Caldwell said, “electric vehicles still need to be subsidized for a significant amount of time.” A slowdown in the country’s shift toward battery-powered vehicles could leave the American auto market a global laggard, electric vehicle proponents warn. They say a similar situation played out a couple of decades ago, when American car companies stayed away from small cars, leaving a big opening for Japanese companies. Sales of electric vehicles are estimated to have jumped more than 70 percent last year in China, which now has the world’s biggest market for electric cars, with about 630,000 units on the road. Canada, France and Sweden each had growth in electric vehicle sales of 50 to 70 percent in 2016, compared with the year before, according to EV Sales, which tracks global sales numbers. A slower transition could also have big consequences for the United States’ carbon emissions. Transportation now regularly emits more earth-warming gases into the atmosphere than any other sector, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. Last year, it overtook the electric power sector for the first time since the late 1970s. That makes switching to cleaner vehicles imperative in further reducing America’s carbon footprint, environmentalists say.
The electric vehicle (the federal Energy Information Administration) market in the US is under threat at federal and state level, as President Trump looks set to roll back stringent federal regulations on vehicle emissions, while the number of states offering financial support to the federal Energy Information Administration buyers has gone from 25 to 16. While critics of the federal Energy Information Administrations argue the industry subsidies should be spent on infrastructure, those lobbying for the industry say that without subsidies, not only will carbon emissions and air pollution increase, but the US could be left behind in a growing - and eventually lucrative - market.