The EV tax credit is dead. What now?

Summary

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Episode: The EV tax credit is dead. What now?
Date: October 16, 2025
Guest Host: Jake Castronakis
Guest: Andy Hawkins, Verge Transportation Editor

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Episode Overview

This episode confronts the recent expiration of the U.S. federal EV (electric vehicle) tax credit, examining its immediate impact, the complex policy background, and the uncertain future for automakers, consumers, and the nation’s climate goals. Verge's Jake Castronakis, filling in for Nilay Patel, interviews Andy Hawkins to break down what's next for the EV industry without government incentives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Was the EV Tax Credit and Why Did It End?

• The federal EV tax credit, last configured by the Inflation Reduction Act, provided up to $7,500 off new, domestically produced EVs ([05:31]).
• The credit aimed to push adoption of EVs, combat climate change, and help the U.S. compete with China’s burgeoning EV market.
• The second Trump administration, prioritizing fossil fuels and rolling back climate policies, terminated the credit effective September 30, 2025 ([05:00], [09:54]).
• The ending was swift: EVs hit historic sales highs in August, only for incentives to evaporate weeks later ([05:00]).

Quote:
"EV sales were fantastic last quarter... more EVs sold in the U.S. than ever before... Now as of September 30th, it's been a hard stop. There is no more EV tax credit. And now we're living in a post credit world."
— Andy Hawkins [07:31]

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2. The Tax Credit’s Essential Role in Building the U.S. EV Market

• The tax credit was described as “absolutely essential” for scaling EV sales beyond early adopters ([07:57]).
• Without the incentive, cost-sensitive buyers are less likely to purchase EVs, hitting automakers hard.
• Major U.S. automakers, like GM and Ford, are rapidly re-evaluating investments, factories, and production plans.

Quote:
"The credits were essential in getting those people into dealerships... Now that they're gone, there's a widespread understanding that EV sales are going to drop dramatically."
— Andy Hawkins [07:57]

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3. The Politics Behind Killing the Credit

• Despite touting support for American manufacturing, the Trump administration axed the credit, aligning more closely with oil and gas interests ([09:54]).
• The tax credit became a political scapegoat, labeled as “government overreach” despite being an opt-in incentive, not a mandate ([09:54]).

Quote:
"For an administration that claims to be very pro manufacturing, this is the most anti-manufacturing thing that you possibly can do."
— Andy Hawkins [09:54]

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4. Automaker Responses and Policy Workarounds

• GM and Ford tried to exploit a leasing loophole—buying their own EVs and leasing them to pass the credit to customers ([11:56]).
• After political pushback, including from Republican senators, these attempts were abandoned.
• Leasing had previously become a popular way for consumers to benefit from credits not available for direct purchases due to less stringent origin requirements for leased vehicles ([18:36]).

Quote:
"They would essentially buy all of their EVs from their dealers... then lease those to consumers with the tax credit baked into that lease price..."
— Andy Hawkins [11:56]

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5. Immediate Aftermath: State Incentives, Price Cuts, and a Looming Slowdown

• States like California considered, then dropped, the idea of state-level credits—deeming it financially impossible to replace the federal role ([20:06]).
• Automakers and dealers are offloading inventory with temporary discounts, some directly matching the old credit:
  • Audi, Kia: up to $6,000 off
  • Hyundai, Lucid: up to $7,500 off
  • Rivian: low-rate financing
    These are expected to disappear soon ([20:06]).
• EV sales are likely to drop; manufacturers and dealers brace for rough quarters ahead ([22:07]).

Quote:
“[States] quickly realized that that was just not financially possible... his quote was, 'we can't make up for federal vandalism of these tax credits.'”
— Andy Hawkins [20:06]

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6. The Challenge of EV Profitability and Manufacturing Transformation

• EVs remain more costly to produce than gas vehicles, chiefly due to high battery costs ([22:36]).
• Automakers have been losing billions on EVs and must now find paths to profitability:
  • Rethinking vehicle form factors—moving away from massive, energy-intensive trucks and SUVs
  • Focusing on smaller batteries, less range, and innovative manufacturing (e.g., "unicasting," Tesla’s "unboxed" build) ([33:48])
• Tesla’s own historic struggles—surviving credit eliminations and leadership controversies—demonstrate these challenges ([25:32]).

Quote:
"This is going to require a huge kind of recalibration of the production process of the supply chain... It's a huge money loser. And what they're going to have to do is now figure out a way to make EVs that are profitable."
— Andy Hawkins [22:36]

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7. The Shadow of China and Global Competition

• The EV credit’s design was strongly motivated by competition with China, mandating U.S. assembly and component sourcing ([36:48]).
• U.S. battery and car factories boomed in anticipation, especially in Republican-led states.
• Now, with government support gone, China’s dominance in affordable EVs is even harder to counter, despite ongoing U.S. tariffs ([36:48]), [39:39].

Quote:
"China has, has figured it out. They have cracked the code on cheap EVs... They don't want America to become a backwater of gas-guzzling, polluting giant trucks and SUVs while the rest of the world shifts to high tech, extremely efficient electric powered vehicles."
— Andy Hawkins [33:48]

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8. Future Outlook: Uncertainty & Industry Retrenchment

• Several models are being discontinued or postponed; EV choices may shrink in the near-term ([31:08]).
• The end of regulatory pressure (fuel economy standards, California's EV sales targets) means automakers must commit to electrification on their own or revert to gas ([40:17]).
• Some optimism remains: EVs are still popular with owners due to lower operating costs and other benefits ([31:08], [42:49]).
• However, sustained growth hinges on delivering truly affordable models and achieving manufacturing breakthroughs, which may take years.

Quote:
"I think automakers will really need to step up their game and truly deliver affordable models... It's just not going to be an immediate situation. I think it's going to take some time."
— Andy Hawkins [31:08]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• "EVs are expensive to make and expensive to buy. The supply chain they rely on is intertwined with China and now subject to tariffs and an escalating trade war."
  — Jake Castronakis [02:22]

• "This is a real, like, you know, just optimistic conversation we're having here. It's really just like a cheery, you know, like fun, fun talk."
  — Andy Hawkins (wry sarcasm) [10:54]

• "Buying your own cars just to sell them again with the credit that you got is kinda brilliant... It's an absolute hack. I love it."
  — Jake Castronakis (on Ford & GM's attempted workaround) [13:54]

• "None of these companies have been able to achieve any of these goals yet and it will take a much longer process... But that said, it's possible. The reality is China has, has figured it out."
  — Andy Hawkins [33:48]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [02:22] – Introduction to topic and episode purpose
• [05:00] – What the EV tax credit was and why it was important
• [07:42] – The credit’s role in building the EV market
• [09:54] – Political motives and end of the credit
• [11:56] – Automaker's attempted workarounds and their political fallout
• [18:36] – The "leasing loophole" and consumer strategies
• [20:06] – State incentives and automaker price cuts
• [22:36] – The challenge of profitability for automakers
• [25:32] – Tesla pre-credit expiration and unique market factors
• [31:08] – Market outlook: fewer models, pullbacks, tougher sales
• [33:48] – Manufacturing innovation and the Chinese model
• [36:48] – U.S.-China competition and lost policy leverage
• [40:17] – Regulatory backslide and the future of electrification
• [42:49] – Uncertain path forward and closing thoughts

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Conclusion

This episode presents a candid, sometimes bleak, assessment of the U.S. EV market at a pivotal moment. With the popular $7,500 tax credit abruptly gone, automakers face mounting losses, supply chain chaos, and global pressure—especially from China. Policy and politics, rather than consumer demand or technology, are shown as powerful determinants of industrial direction. While EVs remain compelling on their own merits, the next few years will test whether the American auto industry can—without a safety net—innovate, compete, and survive.

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For more:

• Listen to the full episode at Decoder
• Contact: [e-mail]

Transcript

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[Jake Castronakis]

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[Jake Castronakis]

Hello and welcome to Decoder. This is Jake Castronakis, Executive Editor at the Verge. I'm filling in For Nilay for 1 last Thursday episode before he returns to full time hosting duties. We've got a very good episode for you today. My guest is Verge Transportation Editor Andy Hawkins and we're talking about the Federal EV tax credit. The tax credit expired at the end of September and There are a lot of questions about what happens to the auto industry after its demise. In its latest form, the tax credit offered a $7,500 discount on eligible domestic made electric cars. As you'll hear Andy explain, this was designed to accomplish a lot of different things all at once. Prop up the United States EV market, fight climate change, and keep pace with China, which has become a global leader in affordable EVs. But the second Trump administration has not been kind to the renewable energy movement, and EVs have become a bit of a political football over the last several years. Trump has turned them into a symbol for government overreach and wielded them as a weapon to target his enemies. Just a few weeks ago at the United Nations General Assembly, Trump called climate change a con job. So, yeah, that's how he feels about that. Now, the EV tax credit has expired and it is not coming back anytime soon. So where does that leave the auto industry? And what happens to the traditional American carmakers that have been investing heavily in domestic production to electrify their lineups? As you'll hear Andy lay out, there's a tough road ahead. EVs are expensive to make and expensive to buy. The supply chain they rely on is intertwined with China and now subject to tariffs and an escalating trade war. And consumers are highly price sensitive in the EV market, much more so than the early adopters who flocked to Tesla years ago. If the US Auto industry wants to win back buyers, it's going to need to produce cheaper EVs, much like China does. And that's going to require manufacturing, supply chain, and technology innovations that will take some time to mature. This is a really hard, complicated set of problems with a lot of moving parts. So I was excited to have Andy on the show to break down all of these components and give us a clearer picture about what's coming next. Okay, Verge Transportation editor Andy Hawkins on the federal EV tax credit. Here we go. Foreign Hawkins, welcome back to Decoder.

[Andy Hawkins]

Hello. Thank you for having me.

[Jake Castronakis]

All right, so, Andy, August 2025 was the best selling month for EVs in US history. There was a big rush to buy these up. A month later, the EV tax credit expired. This feels like a big moment for the industry, a little bit like maybe the. The rug was sort of pulled out from under them. So I want to spend some time talking about what this EV tax credit was and what it means for EVs going forward. So can you tell me a little bit about what did this tax credit do and why is it disappearing.

[Andy Hawkins]

Now these are all great questions. So I think to start out with the EV tax credit, it was a $7,500 tax credit that you could take, anyone could take for buying an electric vehicle. This was for new electric vehicles. Obviously the vehicles had to meet certain qualifications. They needed to be manufactured in North America. Their batteries needed to sourced from our trade partners. There's a long list of requirements, but essentially what it was, how it boiled down to, was the Biden administration, through the Inflation Reduction act that they passed in 2022, established this EV tax credit as a way to incentivize consumers, US consumers to buy more electric vehicles. There's an acknowledgement that climate change was a problem, that over a quarter of carbon emissions are a result of personal transportation, essentially tailpipe pollution from gas burning, gas guzzling vehicles. The idea was we need to shift the from gas guzzlers to electric vehicles. And the best way to do that is to give them a discount. Because EVs are expensive, right? The batteries are very expensive to produce. They are typically sold at a premium over gas vehicles. And so the idea was we need to reduce that price at the point of sale in order to incentivize American car shoppers to buy more electric vehicles so that we can tackle climate change. This is not a new idea. There have been various discounts and incentives in place since far back to even like the W. Bush era. And then they also were established during Obama. They existed during the first Trump administration and then Biden sort of reevaluated them and they how they existed into their current form until just recently when through Trump and the Congressional Republicans, big beautiful budget bill that they passed on July 4th eliminated the tax credit. So as of September 30th, it is gone. So you're, you're correct. EV sales were fantastic last quarter. I think we saw more EV sold in the United States than have ever been sold before. They reached over 10% of all vehicles purchased through the third quarter of this year. And now as of September 30th, it's been a hard stop. There is no more EV tax credit. And now we're living in a post credit world.

[Jake Castronakis]

So you said that climate change was a big motivator in pushing these tax credits. But I'm curious how much standing up the EV industry was a part of this too. Would the EV industry be where it is today without these credits?

[Andy Hawkins]

Definitely not. The tax credits were absolutely essential to the EV market as it existed today. The automakers relied a lot on these credits in order to obviously get consumers through the doors into their dealerships and to consider making this shift because I think as we've seen over the number of years, the auto industry has been able to target EVs towards these early adopters very effectively. But there's a limited number of these early adopters, people who are interested in sort of being future forward buying futuristic cars, switching to a different fuel source. And they have, basically all those people have bought their EVs. Right. So this was going after a larger, more crucial segment of the car shopping market. And that is people who are more motivated by cost than they are by technology. So the credits were essential in getting those people into dealerships, into considering EVs. And now that they're gone, I think that there's a widespread understanding that EV sales are going to drop dramatically. And we're seeing the industry now shift away from, from EV production. You know, a lot of these automakers are winding down certain plans that they had to spin up battery factories and new models. They're, they're pulling back, they're taking big write downs and cash hits. You know, GM just today, as we're talking right now, announced a $1.6 billion write down on their EV production because they are essentially needing to readjust their production plans for, for a post credit environment. I would say that the credit was essential into sort of propping up EV sales for a long time. And now that they're gone, we're gonna, we're gonna see what's gonna happen, I guess.

[Jake Castronakis]

Yeah. So this is one of the things I'm really curious about. You know, the Trump administration, they talk a big game about American manufacturing. And like you were just saying, a lot of American automakers have been making big investments in EV manufacturing. So why did they decide to kill this credit now?

[Andy Hawkins]

It's a great question. In a lot of ways it's cutting off your nose to spite your face type situation. For an administration that claims to be very pro manufacturing, this is the most anti manufacturing thing that you possibly can do. Obviously the Trump administration has been conducting a scorched earth campaign over climate change, kneecapping support for renewable energy for a vast majority of things. And EVs sort of fall into that bucket. But throughout the campaign last year, in the run up to the election, Trump was talking about the EV mandate. That that was one of his big attack lines on, on Biden was that, you know, Biden, through the IRA was forcing people to buy electric vehicles. Obviously that is false. There was no EV mandate. These are all just incentives. But I think through both eliminating the tax credit and then also rolling back fuel standards, fuel emission standards for gas vehicles, which was another way that Biden was trying to incentivize the industry to shift to electric was by making it tougher to make gas cars without penalties. I think the Trump administration is basically just throwing open the door to the oil and gas industry. Obviously, Trump, huge supporter of oil and gas, those industries have traditionally supported his campaigns, and now this is just a gigantic red ribbon wrapped package for oil and gas. By eliminating these incentives and rolling back these standards, I think it sort of falls into the same category of the attacks that this administration has done on clean energy, renewable energy, and the efforts to fight climate change. This is a real, like, you know, just optimistic conversation we're having here. It's really just like a cheery, you know, like fun, fun talk.

[Jake Castronakis]

We're having here a delightful future for clean technology. It seems very promising. I'm curious, were there certain automakers who were benefiting more from this policy than others? I saw that Ford and GM pretty intent on keeping this credit going and even found some sort of hacky workarounds to extend it for a little bit.

[Andy Hawkins]

Yeah, that was a real interesting twist that we saw over the last few weeks. But yeah, I would say GM especially was benefiting a lot from this tax credit through their brands like Cadillac and Chevy. They were really selling a lot of these EVs and shifting a lot of production to here in the United States, Ford a little bit less. So they only had one EV that qualified for the tax credit. That was the Ford F150 Lightning. The Mustang Mach E, still a group, a big seller here in the US but was manufactured in Mexico, so did not qualify for the tax credit. But that said, I think both of those companies were huge benefactors of the tax credit. And now that they're gone, you're seeing them scramble and try to come up with some sort of new ways that they can try to like, prop up their EV sales. So, yeah, what they did was before the tax credit expired, they worked up the scheme so that they would essentially buy all of their EVs from their dealers that they had left in their inventory, put a down payment on those, and then lease those to consumers with the tax credit baked into that lease price so that they could essentially get the tax credit before it expired and then pass that credit along to consumers through this leasing loophole that existed in the, in the current tax credit scheme. So it was, I think, a Hail Mary pass that they were attempting to do. It looked like it was going to work. They had consulted with the IRS and they basically said that is this legal for us to do this? And the IRS is like, yeah, I guess technically it is. And so they were going to go through with it until a couple of Republican senators, I think Bernie Moreno, who's from Ohio, used to be a car salesman before he became a senator, snitched on them essentially and was like, we're going to investigate this and drag them in for our committee and this is not what the American people voted for. Blah, blah, blah. They snitched them out. Both GM and Ford quickly reversed course and said that they were not going to follow through with this plan. So it just goes to show that even through their creative methods, if someone catches wind and they get even the hint of some sort of repercussion, that they will quickly back down from it.

[Jake Castronakis]

Buying your own cars just to sell them again with the credit that you got is. It's kind of brilliant. Is an absolute hack. I love it. I don't know if it's appropriate or not, but you know that's the tax code at work.

[Andy Hawkins]

Yeah. The creative thought process that went into it.

[Jake Castronakis]

We need to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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[Jake Castronakis]

We're back with Verge Transportation Editor Andy Hawkins. Before the break, we were discussing the EV tax credit, what it did, why it died, and how some carmakers like Ford and GM failed in their efforts to keep those incentives going. Next, I want to zoom out a bit and talk about the market for EVs and what might happen now that those credits have been taken away. One thing you mentioned is that they were going to lease them back to consumers, and I saw that leases have been really popular for electric vehicles. Do you have a sense of why that is where people's interest has been for these types of cars.

[Andy Hawkins]

Yeah. So I mentioned it briefly, but there was a leasing loophole as part of the IRA tax credits before they expired. So essentially in order to accept the tax credit on a purchased vehicle, there's a long list of qualifications. The vehicle needed to be made in North America. The battery minerals needed to come from trade partners. The battery components needed to come from our trade partners. There was just a long list of requirements. And so it made it kind of tough. There was only like 20 EVs that actually qualified for the tax credit. I think at its height. That said for leasing, none of these requirements existed. Right. You could have a vehicle that was manufactured in Germany or South America or where have you. The battery could come from China. It didn't really matter because for some reason they left this loophole wide open. So that's how you saw leasing become very popular with EVs, especially for like luxury made EVs, like German, Mercedes Benz, BMW. So all of these EVs could qualify for the tax credit through, through the leasing loophole. And that I think led to a sharp increase in the number of EVs that were leased as opposed to purchased outright.

[Jake Castronakis]

That's amazing that it seems like this is all thought through. Very, very. Yes.

[Andy Hawkins]

If by that. Not at all.

[Jake Castronakis]

Ford and gm, they tried to beat the system. It ultimately failed. Do you think we're going to see more efforts by states to discount EVs or do you think that these companies are going to begin to just cut the prices?

[Andy Hawkins]

I do think that there were some states like California, for example, that said that they were going to try to step in and put in place their own incentives for EV purchases. But I think that they quickly realized that that was just not financially possible. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, recently reversed this pledge to offer state credits to help keep these more affordable, saying that his quote was, we can't make up for federal vandalism of these tax credits. California has a huge economy, they have a huge budget, but there's no accounting for the federal elimination of these tax credits. It just wouldn't have made sense for them financially. I think what you're seeing now is a lot of automakers put in place some discounts, some leasing deals, other things in place to help with their current EV inventory. Right. So EV sales were extremely robust during the third quarter. That's expecting now to drop dramatically after the credits are gone. So now all these dealers with the EVs that they still have in their inventory are going to be left going, what do we do with these? So the automakers are authorizing pretty steep discounts. So we've got Audi, we've got kia with a $6,000 discount. We've got Hyundai with a $7,500 discount. We've got got Lucid offering, you know, 0.99% for 72 months and $7,500 off. We've got Rivian with 1.99% for 60 months. So they're all doing a variety of their own kind of like they're trying to gin up their own kind of like temporary discounts as a way to deal with the inventories that they currently have. But those are only expected to last for so long, like maybe through October, maybe until like November at the very most. And then after that, you're going to see a lot of these discounts evaporate. And EVs are just going to have to sort of compete on their own. Right? They're more expensive than gas cars. We're going to see sales drop off and it's going to be pretty rough for a few quarters. Even Tesla. Elon Musk has said that Tesla investors should expect a rough few quarters over the next year and a half or so. And I think that that's just going to be sort of the reality of the situation.

[Jake Castronakis]

I've read that automakers tend to lose money on electric vehicles. And so if they're trying to add new discounts, if this credit is going away, which is going to make these high prices even more unpalatable, what, what is there for them in the market? How are they going to be able to manage this? Do we think that EVs are going to become suddenly more cost effective to manufacture? Is this going to force them to just make these things happen on a much faster timeline? Is that even possible?

[Andy Hawkins]

Yeah, it's going to require like a huge kind of recalibration of the production process of the supply chain. Because, yeah, you're correct, EVs do cost more money to make than gas cars. I mean, we're talking about the battery being sort of the most expensive component in electric vehicles today. That is costing a lot. So most car companies do take a loss on their EV sales. I think Ford last year lost like $5 billion on EV sales. Like I just mentioned before, GM just took a $1.6 billion write down. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's a huge money loser. And what they're going to have to do is now figure out a way to make EVs that are profitable. It's possible Tesla does it right. They haven't been able to do it over the last year because their sales have been down. But this past quarter their sales have been up because of the EV credit expiring. And before that they were profitable and they were making money off of their Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. And you do that through production changes, through supply chain changes, and really just making a vehicle that is more affordable. I think that there was a mindset in the auto industry for a long time that car companies, in order to get people to buy their EVs, they needed to be sort of the exact carbon copy of a gas car. Right. And what are the gas cars that people like the Most? They're big SUVs and trucks. So you saw a lot of companies like Ford and GM make electric versions of the same vehicles, right? Big gas guzzling trucks and SUVs. Ford made its electric F150 Lightning. GM is making an electric version of its Escalade. They made electric versions of the Hummer, the Sierra EV truck. So the idea was that in order to get people to make this switch, we need to sort of lure them in by making things as familiar and comfortable as possible. I think that that has proven to be an ineffective way in order to sell EVs. They're too heavy, they're too big, the batteries required are too much. And now you're seeing the industry shift and pull back, especially from EV trucks in particular. For example, Stellantis recently announced that it is not going to be making a full electric version of its RAM 1500 RAM charger. And it's going to be focused on making extended range EVs, which are essentially kind of like souped up hybrids. So I think that there's going to need to be a huge retrenchment in the industry order to make an EV that is both affordable, that some people will want to buy, and that is also profitable for the company. And that's going to require a lot of effort on the part of these companies.

[Jake Castronakis]

You mentioned Tesla's struggles and Tesla's really interesting example here because they actually faced the end of an electric vehicle tax credit before. Correct. This is in 2019. And I think they hit some sort of cap. What happened back then?

[Andy Hawkins]

So yeah, back then the iteration of the tax credits that existed were they were similar to the ones that we just had, but there was this cap that if you sold 200,000 of a certain model of vehicle that after that 200,000th vehicle that was sold, then the tax credits would be phased out for that vehicle. So Tesla was the first, obviously, as a full EV maker only making electric vehicles, they were the first to hit that cap. GM followed soon afterwards. But then with the Biden tax credits, they got rid of the idea of a cap altogether and they put sort of a lot of other restrictions in place. So Tesla was able to get the tax credit back. Even with that tax credit for the past year, their sales have been dropping compared year over year, and that is due mostly to the Elon of it all, as we like to say here at the Verge with him going hard into Trump and obviously emerging as a extremely controversial political figure took a huge dent into Tesla sales. That's also due to rising competition to both domestically and also in China, which is a huge market for Tesla. But you know, I think that the elonmetal also had a huge, a huge effect on Tesla sales. The company over the last quarter saw their sales increase as a result of these expiring tax credits. But yeah, I think that there was a situation in place which they, with Tesla, even with the tax credit in place, was having a lot of problems selling their EVs.

[Jake Castronakis]

We need to take another quick break. We'll be right back.

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[Jake Castronakis]

We're back with Verge Transportation Editor Andy Hawkins. Before the break, we were talking about the current state of the EV market and why the US Auto industry is going to need to seriously rethink its strategy around manufacturing, marketing and price if they're going to increase EV sales in the future. To pull that off, a lot of pieces need to fall into place, and some of it depends on some pretty unpredictable factors. So now that the tax credit has expired, are we expecting to see a major slowdown in EV sales? We hit this peak in August, but it sounds like growth was already starting to slow. So now these are going to get presumably even more expensive. What are we seeing is going to come next?

[Andy Hawkins]

So I think in the immediate aftermath there's just going to be fewer choices. Right. The EVs that are for sale now, we're going to see sort of be the ones. I think over the next few years. We're seeing some models are being discontinued. Nissan recently announced that it would not continue to sell the Ariya. A lot of other models that were promised are not coming out. So there's going to be a significant pullback and I think there also a decline in sales. But at the same time, I think that there is an understanding that despite that short term pain, you know, this is basically like we tore off the band aid, right, that the automakers are now going to have to step up their game and deliver on truly affordable models with no excuses and no subsidies. And you know, optimistically, I think that EVs may carry less baggage, political baggage going forward. Right. That you, that you politicians won't be able to attack them as being sort of like a symbol of government overreach or that there is like an EV mandate that never existed. So I think a lot of this, the murkiness goes away, the stigma goes away. If your opinion is like, oh, the government shouldn't be subsidizing this car over that car, well, that's gone now. It's just another car. And there are fewer reasons and rationales basically to say no. So I think that we'll see EVs sort of competing on their own merit. And I think what a lot of people who own EVs in the industry especially will say they do very well. People like electric vehicles and people who have bought electric vehicles have said in surveys they don't intend to go back to gas vehicles. They like their electric vehicles. They like the fact that they're cheaper to operate, they're cheaper to own, they require less maintenance than gas cars. So I think that because of these merits the EVs have over gas cars, that they will continue to be competitive. And then I think that automakers will really need to step up their game and truly deliver affordable models, which we're seeing some of them say that they intend to do. It's just not going to be an immediate situation. I think it's going to take some time.

[Jake Castronakis]

Time. And that's what feels very optimistic to me, this idea that, okay, we're going to cut off this credit that they've been propping themselves up with and suddenly they're just going to be able to cut costs somehow. Ford is working on a new manufacturing method for EVs but even that sounds like a gamble. Ford CEO Jim Farley was on Dakota recently. He said there's a lot of risk involved with its new manufacturing methods and this whole new EV platform idea. Do you think that automakers are going to try and transform how they make these cars in order to get to that more affordable place they need to get to? And what is the timeline on that? Because it does not feel like it's going to be a next year thing.

[Andy Hawkins]

Yeah, it definitely won't be. It's going to take a little while. You know what Ford is talking about here is a wholesale reimagining of the production process. Right. They're talking about cheaper, smaller batteries, less range, unicasting, which means making the parts of the vehicle as one huge part and not multiple parts that need to be welded together. Tesla has talked about like an unboxed manufacturing process that would allow them to reduce the cost of production significantly. None of these companies have been able to achieve any of these goals yet and it will take a much longer process in order to make make these changes. But that said, it's possible. It is possible. The reality is China has, has figured it out. They have cracked the code on cheap EVs and one of the things that Ford cited in their announcement from the other month when they were talking about this new process, this new sort of like Model T era that is going to reinvent their EV production process, they cited specifically byd, which is a huge Chinese company, and the atto, which is one of their more affordable models, which you know, has a battery that is around like 50 kilowatt hours, like extremely small battery when compared to like a lot of American made EVs. This is a battery that potentially could help reduce the cost by $30,000 or more. So it is possible. There are models that exist. And I think when you hear folks like Jim Farley and others cite these Chinese manufacturers, I think it shows how existential this problem is. They don't want America to become a backwater of gas guzzling, polluting giant trucks and SUVs while the rest of the world shifts to high tech, extremely efficient electric powered vehicles. And so I think that that is the reality of the situation. They're hoping to model some of these processes on what they see going on in China and elsewhere. And it's just going to be, I think up in the air as to whether you heard him himself, he's like this is a huge risk. We may fail, we may fall flat on our face in trying to do this. I could lose my job. Any number of things could end up happening. But I feel like the worst of the federal actions are now over. The credit is gone. There's not really anything else that Trump and the Republicans can do to further kneecap EV manufacturing. And so now the real challenge begins.

[Jake Castronakis]

Don't try them. I'm sure they could find a way. We should spend a moment, moment talking more about the China of it all, because that does feel like it's a big element in all of this. China has these very impressive and I think much more affordable EVs. They can't actually sell them in the US. So to what extent was this credit meant to make the US competitive globally in the EV market? Or was that not even on our, our minds as we were, you know, trying to prop up this industry?

[Andy Hawkins]

No, no, it was, it was hugely on the Biden administration's minds and the Democrats when they, when they crafted these, these credits. Right. So the idea was that the only way you could get one of these credits on an EV purchase is if the EV was made in the United States. The battery components were, were made here or from one of our trade partners. And that, you know, all the minerals is essentially, we're talking lithium, cobalt nickel, magnesium. All of these things that go into a giant EV battery also needed to come from valid trade partner sources, right? So anywhere, essentially, not China. And because of that, you saw a lot of manufacturing and production, a huge amount shift to the United States like Ford, gm, Honda, Hyundai, all of these companies spinning up these giant factories, billion dollar factories with huge incentives behind them. And all these promises to create thousands of jobs in the communities, most of which were going to be in red states, right? In places like Kentucky, in Georgia, in Tennessee, places that traditionally voted Republican. I think that there was an idea that, like if, if Biden could, you know, incentivize these companies to build in these communities, that perhaps that could be a political win for him down the road. Boy, did that turn out to be wrong. It was a huge thing that the specter of China was looming over all of this. And now Trump and the Republicans, who ostensibly claim to be also China hawks and extremely concerned about the rise of Chinese manufacturing, which is sort of spurring this whole tariff situation, have essentially eliminated all of these incentives and have handed China like a gigantic opportunity here to dominate the rest of the world with their electric vehicles. Now, right now, China is having a huge problem selling their EVs because they make so many of them and they're so cheap that there's now a glut. And the government is now telling the manufacturers, hey, slow down, this is too much. The price war is getting crazy. They're slashing prices on these EVs. This could potentially ruin our economy. So there are problems in China too. But I think that they are sitting in a situation that is extremely advantageous. When it comes to Europe, for example, they are moving aggressively on the eu. They're eyeing other markets like South America, India, Africa, even byd, NIO Geely. All these other companies are getting extremely aggressive in moving into these other markets because they have such a glut of vehicles. And the US is just sitting back and letting it all happen. So I think that there was a sense that they could challenge the Chinese dominance. All these battery, minerals and elsewhere are coming from this country specifically. And now I think it's just, you know, we've lost the ability to really effectively challenge them. All we've got left is tariffs. And I don't really think that that's going to slow them down as much as they think they will.

[Jake Castronakis]

Well, it's fascinating, you know, not only are is losing the tax credit going to raise the price of these vehicles, but to your point about the Biden administration's incentives for the supply chain, these companies put a bunch of work into establishing supply chains to comply with this tax credit and now they don't have to do any of that. And so you've sort of been coming back to this refrain over and over again about how now these automakers are really and truly on their own with EVs and they just have to make it work. And so I guess that's a big question. What do they need to do in order to make it work?

[Andy Hawkins]

Yeah, I think that's a great, that's a great question. And I think that the companies are still figuring it out, right, because they still, all of them say to a T, we are still committed to electrification. We are still committed to becoming EV companies primarily. But what you're seeing is the language around that has changed dramatically. You had Ford, gm, Volvo, Volkswagen and others and Mercedes pretty much across the board. Every auto manufacturer four or five years ago came out and said, we are going to be an EV only company by X deadline, 2030, 2040, whatever, pick your date. We are going to phase out completely gas cars and we are going to sell electric vehicles only. And it wasn't just out of the sense of having to fight climate change. There was actual regulatory pressure on them to do so. California said that they were going to ban the sale of gas cars by 2035. The EU said that they were going to ban the sale of gas cars by 2030. And now you're seeing a huge 180 shift. The EU now is most likely going to eliminate that ban that they had put in place. California has lost its ability to set its own emission standards thanks to the Trump administration. So now they are under the same program as the rest of the country and can no longer enforce a gas carb sail ban. The Trump administration has also basically eliminated the need to monitor tailpipe emissions altogether. So it's been a huge 180 regulatory pressure has essentially evaporated. And now it's going to be a question of like, are they actually going to follow through because they still say that they want to sell EVs, are they actually going to follow through on that or is it going to be the same mix as we've seen like 80% gas cars and maybe like 20% EVs and hybrids and they're going to lose all this money in the process. So I think it's going to be like we're going to see who are the real still ones that are still committed to this project, to these vehicle programs, and who were the ones that were just saying it because there were there was regulatory pressure on them to do so.

[Jake Castronakis]

It's a fascinating and worrying moment. You know, after a decade or more of pushing EVs for climate reasons, for technology reasons, for competitive reasons, all of that seems to be in backslide right now, now. And it's not entirely clear if these companies are going to be able to follow through and make this industry take off in the way that we hope they would.

[Andy Hawkins]

And like I said, I think like EVs are still better cars, right? And they will still sell. And I think that they have a lot of advantages going for them. It's just going to be a real tough time, I think, over the next, like over the short term. I sort of buy the argument that EVs can compete on the merits because they are such better cars and they do offer a much better value proposition for a lot of people. It's just going to have to be like the companies have to actually sell them at a price that people actually want to buy them at. And that's going to be really interesting to see how that all unfolds. So yeah, it's going to be super interesting to watch. And as you know, the Verge is going to be on top of it.

[Jake Castronakis]

Hopefully they can get there soon. Andy, thank you for joining us on Decoder.

[Andy Hawkins]

Thanks for having me on.

[Jake Castronakis]

I'd like to thank Andy Hawkins for taking the time to speak with me, and thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed it. If you want to let us know what you thought about the show or what else you'd like us to cover, drop us a line. You can email the team atdecoder the verge.com we really do read every email. Decoder also has a TikTok and an Instagram account and now a YouTube channel too. Check those out. Decoderpod. They're a blast. If you like Decoder, please share it with your friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Also, consider subscribing to the Verge if you're a paid subscriber. Great news. You can now listen to Decoder version history and the Vergecast completely ad free. A lot of people have been asking for this and we're excited to finally have it ready for you. Just head to your account preferences page to opt in to start listening without ads. And if you're not a member, you can sign [e-mail] subscribe to get ad free podcasts plus other podcasts perks like exclusive newsletters and unlimited access to everything we publish. Decoder is a production of the Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. See you next time.