holy depreciation, Batman.
Okay, this seems like a good place to start a bit of discussion on subsidies. Because holy shit, the USA is great at subsidizing everything. As a European (stereotyped generally by: everything green is subsidized here and taxed through the roof), I'm eternally amazed how much the other way around the stereotype really should be.
We just bought a 2011 Leaf for €9000, and that is considered extremely cheap, even for a 9 bar Leaf. You rarely get them cheaper anywhere on the mainland for less. Even junk Leafs sell for €4-5k, and those need to be recertified to even drive. Much of this is due to lack of incentives, at least realtively. We don't have any tax credits or subsidies on EVs - literally none. Even outside of my country (Netherlands), the largest direct subsidy or refundable tax credit you can get is about €2500 (in Germany). The real 'subsidy' on EVs is in the form of waived pollution taxes (which can amount to a lot) and - mostly for businesses - refunded value-added tax and an investment tax credit. Still, even if you combine all of this the effective 'subsidy' on a new Leaf would be about €2500 net, bringing the price to €27500ish. Literally the best you can do.
So people value used EVs very highly; good luck finding any second hand EV for under €8000, most 2011-2014s are between €12k and €18k depending on trim level.
Add to that the fact that a 'short' range EV is still very useful around here. I live in a country about as flat as Kansas with moderate temperatures all year round and 70% of the country lives within a circle about the size of the NYC metro area. I went to a buddy this week in a town considered on the outskirts of this area, and I could have easily done that on a single charge - about 50mi round trip. This also adds to the value of the car.
Now of course, can we slap a moral value onto this? IMO, the American way is the right way here: on a fundamental level, electrification is something we need to speed up as much as possible to wean off of oil products. Electrified vehicles have the potential of reducing overall emissions and pollution in general by very large amounts, almost an order of magnitude in the long run. There is a clear path to progress, and investing a minute part of the GDP to hasten this and cement the US car industry as world leaders in this respect is a good thing. I wish this were done in Europe more. Basically only Norway cares at this point, and they don't even have a car industry. They're just subsidizing Tesla. By the way, subsidies around there are about the same as in CA.
And IMO you can clearly see the fruits of this labor in consumer acceptance and sales numbers; Leafs are very popular in the States compared to here. Flipside of course is that they depreciate much faster, as somehow people were able to buy new Leafs for the price of what a low-trim second hand one would cost here after 6 years :s. I mean, just wow.
But the gist I want to get at is: when is it enough? Clearly, a whole fuckton of subsidies works great. But can we get a similar boost when reducing subsidies or even eliminating them completely, sticking like most of Europe to 'soft' advantages, like priority in carpooling lanes, ability to drive in city centers that are off-limits to ICEs, reduced taxing and subsidized charging infrastructure. At some point you're picking winners instead of incentivizing a budding industry, and it's pretty hard to call a 300k cars per year industry nascent. It's pretty mature at this point.
Edit: oh, right, almost forgot to just add an important point: subsidies can have devastating effects as well, just look at the solar industry. Through mostly a completely broken regulatory system temporarily boosted by subsidies, home solar installations in the USA are about double to triple the cost of installations in Europe, which have mostly not gotten any direct subsidies, but rather got de facto net metering. Combined with differences in energy usage between the regions, this makes a home solar installation affordable on a single month's salary in Europe, versus typically about an entire year's salary in the USA. So things can go the other way around. All else being equal, subsidies seem to be a good incentive, but you need to have regulatory support as well.
