Here’s how you can save $6K by turning in your gas guzzler for a new EV in Colorado
Starting this week, Colorado residents will have the opportunity to save an extra $6,000 toward the purchase or lease of a new electric vehicle simply by turning in their old gas guzzlers. Here’s who is eligible.
Colorado is launching the Vehicle Exchange Colorado (VXC) Program to help incentivize swapping old, air-polluting gas models for new and used electric vehicles.
Applications open on Thursday, August 31, and will help income-qualified Colorado residents partially cover the upfront cost of replacing their gas guzzlers with EVs.
Eligible residents can receive a $6,000 rebate toward the purchase of a new EV (or PHEV) or $4,000 toward a used one. The rebate can be used on top of other state and federal tax credits and rebates, including the $7,500 IRA credit, enabling over $13,500 in savings between the two incentives alone.
The $6,000 EV rebate program is designed to help Colorado meet its goal of achieving 940,000 electric cars on the road by 2030. Currently, the state has around 90,000 or about 15.7 EVs per 1K residents.
Who is eligible?
Meanwhile, there are a few restrictions that apply. After all other rebates, tax credits, and other discounts, the purchase or lease of the new electric vehicle must be under $50,000.
For example, if a new car has an MSRP of $54,000, Xcel Energy’s $5,500 EV rebate would lower the price below the threshold, allowing the buyer to also redeem the VXC credit. Add-ons, upgrades, destination charges, and other fees are not included in the purchase price.
To meet the income qualifications, the household income must be below 80% of the area’s median income (AMI).
For example, if you live in Boulder, a four-person household must make under $106,240 to be eligible for the rebate. You can see the full list of AMI requirements here.
The vehicle being turned in must also be at least 12 years old or fail an emissions test in Colorado (but is still operational). Furthermore, the vehicle must be titled in Colorado, cannot have a lien, and needs to be registered under the participant’s name.
To be eligible, you must be a resident of Colorado, over 18 years of age, income-qualified, eligible to purchase a vehicle in the state, and own a car that passes the requirements.
Those who meet the requirements can apply on the Colorado Energy Office’s Website. The program will begin at 9 a.m. MT on Thursday, August 31.
Ed Piersa, a program manager with the Colorado Energy Office, said transportation is one of the most significant GHG producers in the state (via The Denver Post), explaining the new program is “beneficial to all Coloradans.”
The program will help those who may not otherwise have been able to afford a new EV have a chance to experience the benefits. Meanwhile, the cleaner air from fewer gas guzzlers on the road will help the entire state, according to Piersa.
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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
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