Your Electricity Provider May Soon Pay You to Buy an Electric Car

July 18, 2017 – It is a new phenomenon in the United States, but utility companies in Florida, Hawaii, Vermont, Oklahoma, and California are now offering customers discounts and rebates between $450 and $11,300 when they purchase an electric vehicle (EV).

Why would electricity providers do this?

Because kick-starting EV purchases is in their best economic interest with a little bit of thought about the mitigation of global warming. More customers with EVs means these companies will sell more electricity.

Kellen Schefter, of the Edison Electric Institute, an organization that represents 70% of American electricity generating companies, argues that utility rebates are a part of an outreach effort to speed up the establishment of a nationwide EV infrastructure to by 2025 support 7 million electric-powered cars on U.S. roads.

So who is offering new EV purchasers discounts and rebates?

• In California Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas and Electric, give customers with EVs credits of between $200 and $500. In addition, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power gives residents a $500 rebate to install a charging station. Burbank Water and Power gives residents $500 and commercial sites $1,000 for installing charging stations, and in addition a discount on the price of electricity.
• Vermont Electric Cooperative offers new EV lease or purchases a $250 credit.
• Burlington Electric, a municipal-owned utility offers a $600 rebate for purchases or leasing of plug-in hybrids and $1,200 for EVs to help the city in its efforts to get to zero emissions.
• Green Mountain Power, Vermont’s largest utility just announced a $10,000 rebate to purchasers of the 2017 Nissan LEAF.
• Georgia Power gives residential customers $250 and businesses $500 for installing EV charging stations.
• JEA, a utility in northeastern Florida is offering plug-in vehicles with battery sizes smaller than 15 Kilowatt/hours, $500, and for those larger, $1,000.
• Oklahoma Gas and Electric is offering a $10,000 incentive to purchasers of the 2017 Nissan LEAF.
• Kaua’i Island Utility Cooperative and Hawaiian Electric Co. are offering a $10,000 rebate to customers who purchase a Nissan LEAF.

These utility incentives when combined with the many federal and state rebates as well as car insurance discounts for EV leases and purchases, may just do the trick in growing unit sales to the projected levels described above.

No Canadian utilities currently offer rebates to EV buyers. But the Hudson Bay Company provides free valet service for those who pull up to their stores driving an EV.