You don’t have to give Rusty Banks of Macon much reason to show off his new car.
Banks bought his all-electric Nissan Leaf just a few months ago. When he gave a reporter a ride recently, it still had the new car smell.
Banks’ Leaf starts nearly silently, with just a bing bong chime. Banks pointed to the dash and the battery life indicator.
“As you can see we have 74 miles left,” he said.
On the road — there was a noticeable lack of engine noise.
“You just get used to the quiet and I like it, I like it alot,” Banks said.
Banks drove a pickup truck before so he doesn’t come to mind as the typical electric car buyer.
“I’m not one of those tree-hugger types that’s collecting rainwater and stuff like that,” he said. “I look at the economics of it.”
Part of his economic equation is a $5,000 credit applied to the income taxes owed to Georgia. The incentive got Banks over the worries of driving a car with limited range.
“You are going to offer me something to try it out? Yeah, I’ll bite,” he said.
The Georgia Electric Vehicle Tax Credit is as generous as any offered in the nation, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation or I.C.C.T, which studied electric vehicle incentives across the country. That makes Georgia second only to California in the number of electric-only vehicles registered. The size of the incentive is unusual. But so is the age of the policy. Georgia passed this in 1998 when the first wave of electric cars came and went making it among the oldest electric vehicle incentives in the nation. ICCT Program Director Nick Lutsey says the Georgia incentive stands in a class of its own.
“I don’t know of any other one of those circumstances where it just already happened to have the incentive when it became relevant with a lot of new products on the market,” Lutsey said.
There’s a rub. There are few alternative powered cars qualify for a tax credit. The $5,000 break goes solely to cars powered only by electricity. A lesser incentive of $2,500 aims at vehicles powered by an alternative fuel. Gasoline doesn’t count, so hybrids are out. And the old policy came before leasing became a popular option. And that, says Georgia Representative Chuck Martin, means the incentive is out-of-whack.
“It’s a 17-year-old credit that has been on the books that technology and the economy, basically pricing, have rendered obsolete,” Martin said.
Martin, an Alpharetta Republican, has championed a bill to end the credit entirely by the end of June. The money saved — $50 million annually — would support the $1 billion transportation bill in the legislature. Not everyone agrees with ending the credit Representative Ben Harbin of Evans would lower the credit to three thousand dollars and phase out over four years. Why? The electric vehicle market still needs support.
“What we’re trying to do is incentivize a market that is growing but has the potential to grow so much more as long as we have these incentives in place and get people buying into that market,” Harbin said.
Martin says he’d consider Harbin’s “phase out” proposal. But first he wants a clean slate — a vote up-or-down on the $5,000 EV break.
To Rusty Banks, the electric car owner, people are still uneasy about driving a car powered by electricity. The credit makes it palatable to be pays — a guinea pig.
“So yeah, I guess I’m taking advantage fo the system… what’s offered,” Banks said. “But at the same time the system is learning a lot from me because I’m willing to try it out.”
State lawmakers will likely vote on the electric vehicle bills by March 13.
