The US Treasury Department today announced its expected EV tax credit guidance on the battery component and critical mineral sourcing requirements of the Inflation Reduction Act, changing the availability of EV tax credits in the US, with the net effect of reducing tax credit amounts for many vehicles purchased on April 18 or later.
The Inflation Reduction Act includes a provision that limits the $7,500 EV tax credit to vehicles that are assembled in North America. Beyond that, a certain percentage of each car’s battery components need to be built in North America, and critical minerals need to be sourced from the US or a US free trade country, with these percentages increasing every year. Each of these two requirements make up half of the credit, so if a car qualifies for one but not the other, it’s eligible for $3,750 worth of federal tax credits.
The NA-assembled provision went into effect immediately in August when the bill was signed, but the battery sourcing provisions were left up to the Treasury to decide. It was originally supposed to announce those specifics by December, but pushed back the deadline until today.
This temporarily qualified some vehicles, like the Chevy Bolt (which will now remain a screaming deal through April 17), and some Tesla models for the full $7,500 credit. Both GM and Tesla have previously stated that they don’t expect to qualify for the full purchase credit when the new battery rules go into effect.
Senior administration officials advised that while fewer cars will qualify for the full credit in the short term, the law will work to strengthen the US industrial base and eventually there will be more cars that qualify as production gets on-shored.
In addition to the NA-assembly and battery provisions, cars over $55K and SUVs/trucks over $80K MSRP do not qualify. Also, taxpayers cannot claim the credit if their income is over $150K/$225K/$300K for single/head-of-household/married filing jointly.
The domestic assembly provisions caused some rankling in the international community when the bill was passed, with some foreign automakers and governments decrying it as a protectionist move. Since then, to help smooth over these complaints, the US signed a free trade deal for battery minerals with Japan earlier this week and is working on a similar agreement with Europe.
Senior Treasury and White House officials said today that due to the domestic production provisions of the IRA, $45 billion worth of new electric car manufacturing investments have been announced since the act was signed. The administration said this accounts for tens of thousands of jobs across 24 states, along with several other commitments related to the law’s EV-adoption goals (more public charging, more electric transit, and so on).
Details of the new battery sourcing requirements
Thankfully, the new battery sourcing guidance today held few surprises. It is, however, going into effect a little later than expected: April 17, rather than the end of March (today).
So buyers will have a couple more weeks to purchase an EV before tax credit amounts are reduced, as the new guidance will be applicable to vehicles placed into service on April 18 or later. These vehicles may lose access to half or all of the tax credit, depending on where their battery components and critical minerals are sourced.
To meet requirements set up in the IRA, manufacturers must ensure that battery critical minerals are “extracted or processed in the US or any country with which the US has a free trade agreement,” or recycled in North America. They must also ensure that battery components are “manufactured or assembled in North America.”
Each of these legs accounts for half of the total $7,500 credit.
Each leg also has an “applicable percentage” based on the year the vehicle is “placed into service,” which can be seen in the flowchart below. The process of measuring whether a car meets these requirements is relatively straightforward, and involves identifying the value (rather than weight or volume) of each component or mineral used in the battery supply chain:
The Treasury seems like it intends to take a lenient view of what counts as a “free trade agreement” for the critical mineral provisions, and specifically noted that this week’s agreement with Japan counts. The list of countries it identified was: Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Jordan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Oman, Panama, Peru, Singapore, and Japan
There is one more consideration: After 2024, batteries must contain no components whatsoever that were manufactured or assembled by a “foreign entity of concern” (FEOC) and after 2025, no critical minerals can be extracted, processed, or recycled by a FEOC.
The law itself does not specify a full list of FEOCs, so it falls upon the Treasury to provide that before the end of the year, when the rule first takes effect. The Treasury could not tell us whether this list would focus on national or subnational entities.
Presumably, some significant percentage of those entities will be associated with China, given that the IRA specifically intends to reduce the overreliance on China for batteries, whether the list ends up including all of China itself or not. A senior administration official specifically noted that many minerals currently get extracted in Australia and processed in China. The administration hopes some of those minerals could instead be processed perhaps in Japan, under the US’s newly signed trade agreement focused on environmental standards and workers’ rights.
And there is still a chance to iron out any wrinkles left in today’s guidance, as today’s rule is merely a “proposed” rule, rather than a final one. The proposed rule is published in the federal register, and public comments will be taken through June 16. This also means that vehicles placed into service between April 18 and whenever the final rule goes into effect will use the proposed rule, whereas later vehicles will use the final rule, in whatever form that rule takes. Any changes are likely to be minor.
With the new tax credit guidance only released today, a full list of qualifying vehicles is not yet available. Manufacturers will have to certify that their cars meet these new sourcing requirements and submit that information before the proposed rule goes into effect on April 17. The government will publish a list of eligible vehicles and the amount of credit each vehicle receives on fueleconomy.gov on April 18, and we at Electrek will keep you updated when that list comes out.
Electrek’s Take
With today’s battery sourcing guidance, we’ve moved one step closer to the end of the long and complicated EV tax credit implementation saga. Most provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act are now somewhat clear, with the primary exception of the future point-of-sale tax credits, slated for 2024, which will allow buyers instant access to EV discounts instead of having to wait to file their taxes.
There will be a few more changes over time, as manufacturers move to onshore production, or as the US government possibly makes more deals with other countries as it did with Japan this week. These should gradually qualify more cars for tax credit access.
On the other hand, some cars might lose out over time due to increases in the “applicable percentage” as years tick by. We’ll keep you updated about any changes as we learn about them, but hopefully things will settle into a bit more of a steady state from here on out.
It would have been nicer if the journey was a little simpler, but given that the legislation had the goal of not only increasing electric car adoption but also increasing American manufacturing in a world where manufacturing is so globalized, it was always going to end up being a little complex.
And in the end, more cars will take advantage of the tax credit than before, when credits were capped at 200,000 per manufacturer, so it’s still an improvement, if an imperfect one.
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Global renewable developer and energy giant RWE has halted its US offshore wind operations “for the time being” because of the “political environment” the Trump administration has created.
RWE, Germany’s biggest electricity producer, said in March that it had dialed back its US offshore wind activities. But now, CEO Marcus Krebber said in a speech transcript, which he’ll deliver at the company’s Annual General Meeting in Essen on April 30, that its US offshore wind business is now closed (but it wasn’t all bad news):
In the US, where we have stopped our offshore activities for the time being, our business in onshore wind, solar energy, and battery storage has so far been developing very dynamically. At the start of this year, we reached an important milestone when our US generation capacity hit the 10 gigawatt mark. The construction of a further 4 gigawatts is secured.
He went on to say that renewables have created regional value and jobs, but that the company remains “cautious given the political developments.” RWE has introduced more stringent requirements for future US investments:
All necessary federal permits must be in place. Tax credits must be safe harbored and all relevant tariff risks mitigated. In addition, onshore wind and solar projects must have secured offtake at the time of the investment decision. Only if these conditions are met will further investments be possible, given the political environment.
About half of RWE’s installed renewable capacity is in the US, where it’s the third-largest renewable energy company through its subsidiary, RWE Clean Energy. RWE holds the rights to develop US offshore wind projects in New York, Louisiana, and California.
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RWE paid $1.1 billion for the New York lease area in 2022, where it’s meant to develop the 3 gigawatt (GW) Community Offshore Wind with the UK’s National Grid. Community Offshore Wind was projected to come online in the early 2030s and expected to power more than a million homes.
The developer paid $5.6 billion for the Louisiana lease in the Gulf of Mexico in 2023 as the lone bidder for development rights, and the Canopy Offshore Wind project off Northern California was not expected to be completed for another decade.
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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump and his allies have raked in nearly $900,000 in trading fees over the past two days from the president’s $TRUMP cryptocurrency token, according to Chainalysis, a blockchain data company.
The surge came after a Wednesday announcement in which the top 220 holders of the token were promised dinner with the president.
“Have Dinner in Washington, D.C. With President Trump,” reads a message on the front page of the Trump coin’s website. The event, which is black tie optional and hosted at the president’s private club in the Washington area, is scheduled for May 22, with a reception for the top 25 holders. A “VIP White House Tour” will take place the following day, the site says. The website also hosts an active leaderboard displaying the usernames of top buyers.
The $TRUMP memecoin jumped more than 50% on the dinner news, boosting its total market value to $2.7 billion. It was met with fierce criticism from some of Trump’s political opponents who said the move was further evidence that the president was using crypto to enrich himself. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a prominent Trump critic, wrote on X that the sale was “the most brazenly corrupt thing a President has ever done. Not close.”
Roughly 80% of the $TRUMP token supply is controlled by the Trump Organization and affiliates, according to the project’s website. Since its launch in January, trading activity has generated about $324.5 million in trading fees for insiders, Chainalysis found. These fees are generated through the token’s built-in mechanism that routes a percentage of each trade to wallets controlled by the project — wallets that, according to the website, are linked to the coin’s creators.
Memecoins, often referred to as meme tokens, are a subset of digital assets that use blockchain technology and derive their value largely from internet culture, memes and social media hype rather than from an underlying utility or asset. The originators of memecoins can make fees when their coins are bought and sold.
They have grown in popularity in recent years as speculative assets, with some coins including dogecoin and fartcoin amassing total market values in excess of $1 billion.
Most of the $TRUMP supply remains locked under a three-year vesting plan, with coins gradually becoming available over time. Lockups like these are meant to protect investors by preventing insiders from cashing out all at once — a scheme commonly known in the crypto world as a “rug pull.” Vesting schedules aim to give retail buyers confidence that early holders won’t overwhelm the market and tank the token’s value.
Still, the dinner contest is being viewed by critics as an unusually explicit attempt to monetize presidential access.
As CNBC reported Friday, Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts are urging the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to investigate whether the promotion constitutes “pay to play” corruption.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The company behind the memecoin also did not respond to a request for comment.
Delaney Marsco, the director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit focused on campaign finance and government accountability, told NBC News the coin and dinner contest amounted to an unprecedented ethics breach — though it is unlikely to be illegal.
“Criminal conflicts of interest statutes don’t apply to the President,” she said. “That has allowed him to go against decades of of norms that every modern president since Carter has adhered to, which is to divest your financial interests, rid yourself of your businesses, and kind of go in to the presidency with a clean financial slate so that no one could accuse you of manipulating policy decisions or using your position in order to enrich yourself.”
“The fact that he is not barred by the law from having these financial interests like this meme coin allows him to engage in a lot of seemingly corrupt activity. It has the appearance of a pay to play, so the President is apparently selling access to himself,” Marsco added.
Molly White, an independent crypto researcher, told NBC News that the leaderboard only shows top $TRUMP holders — and then only by their chosen screen name, making it difficult to identify who is paying to potentially join the dinner.
Schiff and Warren have cited public reports showing that some $TRUMP investors have ties to foreign exchanges or received funds from crypto platforms banned in the U.S., including Binance.
White also noted that at least one top $TRUMP owner has an account on Binance, a cryptocurrency company that doesn’t allow American users.
Trump was elected with significant help from the cryptocurrency industry, which poured tens of millions of dollars into the 2024 election, outpacing corporate donations from traditional sectors like banking and oil. After opposing digital assets during his first term, Trump pivoted in 2024 to campaign as a champion of cryptocurrency, casting Democrats as hostile to innovation and as advocating for tighter regulation.
The $TRUMP token itself offers no product or service, according to the project’s website. It is part of a broader push by the Trump family into digital assets, despite the market’s volatility and regulatory risks.
In addition to the $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins, the family is backing World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance venture that has raised $550 million across two token sales since last October. Buyers are barred from reselling their tokens and receive no share of profits — but a Trump-affiliated entity is entitled to 75% of net revenue, including token sale proceeds.
Together, these projects have created new streams of revenue for Trump and his inner circle at a time when regulatory oversight of cryptocurrency has weakened sharply under his administration.
It’s that time of year again, time for events across the country to show off electric vehicles at Drive Electric Earth Month.
Drive Electric Earth Month is an offshoot of Drive Electric Week, a long-running annual tradition hosting meetups mostly in the US, but also occasionally in other countries. It started as Drive Electric Earth Day, but since not every event can happen on the same day, they went ahead and extended it to encompass “Earth Month” events that happen across the month of April. It’s all organized by Plug In America, the Sierra Club, the Electric Vehicle Association, EV Hybrid Noire, and Drive Electric USA.
Events consist of general Earth Day-style community celebrations, EV Ride & Drives where you can test drive several EVs in one place, and opportunities to talk to EV owners and ask them questions about what it’s like to live with an EV, away from the pressure of a dealership.
But the bulk of the events happened on the weekends surrounding Earth Day, April 22, so there were several last weekend and will be even more this upcoming weekend.
There are plenty of events in the big cities where you’d expect, but Plug In America wanted to highlight a few of the events in smaller places around the country. Here’s a sampling of upcoming events:
Big Island EV – Cruise and Picnic in Waimea, HI on April 26, 10am-1pm – EV drivers will congregate in various places around the Big Island (Kona, Waimea, Waikoloa and Hilo), then drive up Saddle Road to the Gil Kahele Recreation Area on Mauna Kea for a potluck and a chance to talk about the experience of owning EVs on the Big Island.
Santa Barbara Earth Day 2025 and Green Car Show in Santa Barbara, CA on April 26-27, 11am-8pm – This is part of Santa Barbara’s Earth Day celebration, which routinely attracts 30,000 participants and is one of the longest-running Earth Day celebrations on the planet. The Green Car Show includes ride & drives and an “Owners Corner” where owners can showcase their EVs and attendees can check them out and ask questions.
Earth Day’25 – EV’s role in a sustainable future in Queretaro City, Mexico on April 26, 9am-4pm – The sole Mexican event, this is a combined in-person/online seminar at the Querétaro Institute of Technology.
Norman Earth Day Festival in Norman, OK on April 27, 12-5pm – Another municipal Earth Day festival, with hands-on activities for kids to learn about the environment. A portion of the parking lot reserved for an EV car show for EV owners who pre-register to show off their vehicles.
Oregon Electric Vehicle Association Test Drive & Information Expo in Portland, OR on April 27, 10am-4pm – This one is at Daimler Truck’s North American HQ, and will have several EVs for test drives, owner displays (including DIY gas-to-EV conversions), and keynote presentations by EV experts. They’ll even have a 1914 Detroit Electric EV available for test rides!
And, we at Electrek want to give a shoutout to Rove’s EV Drive Days in Santa Ana 10am-3pm April 28 – ROVE is the company behind the “full-service” EV charging concept that we’ve talked about several times here on Electrek, and we like what they’re doing for EV charging. They’ve hosted a few community events, and this is their contribution to Earth Month.
Each event has a different assortment of activities (e.g. test drives won’t be available at every event, generally just the larger ones attended by local dealerships), so be sure to check the events page to see what the plan is for your local event.
These events have offered a great way to connect with owners and see the newest electric vehicle tech, and even get a chance to do test rides and drives in person. Attendees got to hear unfiltered information from actual owners about the benefits and trials of owning EVs, allowing for longer and more genuine (and often more knowledgeable) conversations than one might normally encounter at a dealership.
And if you’re an owner – you can show off your car and answer those questions for interested onlookers.
To view all the events and see what’s happening in your area, you can check out the list of events or the events map. You can also sign up to volunteer at your local events, and if you plan to show off your electric car, you can RSVP on each event page and list the vehicle that you plan to show (or see what other vehicles have already registered).
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