Trumps transition team aims to kill Biden EV tax credit

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is planning to kill the $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric-vehicle purchases as part of broader tax-reform legislation, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.Ending the tax credit could have grave implications for an already stalling U.S.EV transition.

And yet representatives of Tesla – by far the nation’s largest EV seller – have told a Trump-transition committee they support ending the subsidy, said the two sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.Elon Musk, one of Trump’s biggest backers and the world’s richest person, said earlier this year that killing the subsidy might slightly hurt Tesla sales but would devastate its U.S.EV competitors, which include legacy automakers such as General Motors.Shares of Tesla fell 5.5% to $311.77 in afternoon trading on Thursday.Repealing the subsidy, which has been a signature measure of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), is being discussed in meetings by an energy-policy transition team led by billionaire oilman Harold Hamm, founder of Continental Resources, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, the two sources said.The group has had several meetings since Trump’s Nov.

5 election victory, including some at his Florida Mar-a-Lago club, where Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has also spent considerable time since the election.Representatives of Tesla, GM, Ford, Stellantis and the Trump transition did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing nearly all major automakers besides Tesla, also did not immediately respond.The alliance last month in an Oct.

15 letter urged Congress to retain the EV tax credits, calling them “critical to cementing the U.S.as a global leader in the future of automotive technology and manufacturing.”Trump repeatedly pledged to end Biden’s “EV mandate” on the campaign trail, without spelling out specific targe...