Goodbye, tax credits: President Donald Trump’s tax and budget bill ended tax credits of up to $7,500 on eligible EV purchases as of Sept. 30, and EV demand is expected to cool without federal incentives. Rivian recently cut 4.5% of its workforce, or about 600 workers, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“With the changing operating backdrop, we had to rethink how we are scaling our go-to-market functions,” CEO RJ Scaringe wrote to employees, per the WSJ.
Pricing starts above $70,000 for the EV maker’s current passenger vehicles.
“It meant that we needed to reduce our costs in our vehicle roadmap,” McDonough said of the end of the EV tax credits. “And the key strategy for us is to bring to market a more mass-market-priced product, which is coming out next year.”
The excuse that I hear from green EV fans is that a new technology needs subsidies to develop. Subsidies reduce consumer costs allowing a larger market. Rivian seems to think that losing the tax credits will require them to cut costs. This should increase demand. Wow! Maybe free markets are a better way!
Rivian loses money with each vehicle sold. They hope to make up for it in volume.
ReplyDeleteYou laugh. Our VP of Marketing told us that loss per emulator we sold in Europe we would make up in volume. This was not entirely absurd. If we increase volume 20x, we would be amortizing fixed costs across more units.
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