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For anyone considering buying an EV this year, theres a looming question: Will the federal tax credits for clean vehicles still be around by the time you file your taxes in 2026? Harbinger Motors, a startup that makes electric delivery vehicles for commercial use, decided to help its customers with what it calls an IRA Risk-Free Guarantee (referring to the Inflation Reduction Act). If the tax credit is discontinued, the company will cover enough of the cost to make the EV the same price as the diesel equivalent. The tax credit is impactful, says Harbinger cofounder and CEO John Harris. We built the company around the belief that you have to sell these vehicles at the same price as diesel vehicles for them to make sense for most customers. And when you start to throw all this uncertainty at the customer around, Well, maybe the price is going to be $20,000 higher than you think it is, these customers dont have the margins to gamble like that. [Photo: Harbinger Motors] Harris believes that the odds of the credit disappearing are lowwhich is why the company is willing to take its own risk in offering the program. Theres a lot of noise coming from the White House about electric vehicles, he says. Its mostly focused on mandates . . . but there is no mandate in the IRA. What the IRA really looks like is massive federal support for automotive manufacturingwhich last time I checked is a priority for this administration. If there was a 60-40 split in Congress, maybe the IRA would get repealed. But consider that the House margin is three seats. There are a dozen or more elected representatives just from Michigan. What youre really talking about is, can you convince all the elected representatives from Michigan to vote out the auto industry? I just dont think theyre going to do that. Though the political odds may keep the incentive in place, it’s sort of scary for a lot of customers, and so we’re prepared to just take the uncertainty out of the equation for them, Harris says. It’s not the customer’s responsibility to employ a government relations firm and understand all of these political dynamics. [Photo: Harbinger Motors] Harbinger makes the chassis for delivery vehicles that are roughly the size of FedEx trucks; some preproduction vehicles are in use with its customers now, and around 1,500 are on track to be delivered later this year. One chassis has a list price of around $103,200 (in the standard way that this type of vehicle is built, another company completes the vehicle for additional money). The leading diesel competitor has a similar list price for its own chassis, but dealers usually give discounts, so the typical transaction is $90,000. To make the vehicle truly cost-competitive, Harbinger is offering a $12,900 discount that will help replace the tax credit if it disappears and bring the cost down to around $90,000. If the tax incentive stays in place, customers will make a second payment to cover that discount. But because the tax credit itself is even largerup to $40,000customers could ultimately get the vehicles for less than they would have paid for a diesel truck. (Operating an EV, and fueling with electricity instead of diesel, is also much cheaper.) Most commercial EVs are much more expensive up front; the price difference between an EV and a comparable diesel version is often more than the full tax credit, so manufacturers are unlikely to offer a similar program. Harbinger has competitive pricing in part because of its manufacturing process. At its factory in Orange County, California, it builds its own partsincluding battery packs and motorsrather than using a complex supply chain. And instead of dealing with multiple layers of suppliers, it buys materials like copper in bulk at commodity prices. The company also has little exposure to the tariffs newly imposed on Mexico, Canada, and China because it builds its own parts. Companies that sell passenger EVs may also be unlikely to offer to cover the cost of the tax credit if it’s revoked, both because automakers are struggling with uncertainty about tariffs and because the vehicles are sold at higher volumes. In many cases, however, those cars and trucks are already close in price to the gas equivalents.
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E-Commerce
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump initiated a trade war with Canada and Mexico, Americas two largest trading partners. Following through on weeks of threats, he imposed 25% tariffs on imported goods from Mexico and Canada and a lower 10% tariff on imports of Canadian energy resources. Leaders in Canada and Mexico quickly struck back. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled an immediate 25% tariff on $20.5 billion worth of goods from the United States and promised to extend the tax to another $85 billion in products in late March. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced she also planned to unveil retaliatory tariffs this coming Sunday. Trumps tariffs, which are widely expected to raise prices for U.S. consumers, are also poised to upend the American electricity market. All U.S. power grids except for Texass have some level of interconnection with grids in Canada, the largest energy supplier to the U.S. Historically, the U.S. has imported roughly twice as much power from Canada as it exports there, though that ratio has started to shift in recent years as climate change-driven drought has slowed the output of hydroelectricity in provinces like Quebec and Ontario. Some 98% of Americas natural gas imports, and 93% of its electricity importsmuch of that from hydroelectric damscome from Canada. Americas reliance on Canadian power is not evenly distributed. Northern energy grids are generally more reliant on Canadas energy resources than southern grids due to their geographic proximity to Canada. States like New York and Minnesota have also entered into energy market agreements with Canadian provinces to receive their hydroelectricity in order to meet ambitious and rapidly approaching climate change goals. From Canadas perspective, withholding or taxing energy exports to the U.S. is an effective bargaining chipperhaps one of the countrys most powerful. I see energy as Canadas queen in this game of chess, Andrew Furey, the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, said in January, when Trump had not yet followed through on his threat of Canadian tariffs. Fureys province is one of five that supplies the U.S. with hydropower. On the evening before the tariffs took effect, Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, threatened to cut off energy exports to the United States full stop with a smile if Trump continues to target Canada with tariffs. On Tuesday, Ford announced a 25% export tax on power Ontario ships via transmission lines to 1.5 million homes in three statesMichigan, Minnesota, and New Yorkand said a full export ban was still on the table. All three states affected by Ontarios export tax have climate targets on the books that rely in some measure on hydroelectric power. Minnesota, Michigan, and New York all aim to achieve clean electricity grids by 2040. Michigan is relying in large part on its own hydroelectric facilities, but Minnesota and New York are, to varying degrees, dependent on Canada to reach their targets. Experts told Grist its too soon to say what Trumps tariffs, and Fords retaliatory measures, mean for these states climate goalsand their residents. When youre adding unnecessary friction into the market, of course youre going to see price increases, said Daniel A. Zarrilli, who served as chief climate policy adviser to former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. Tariffs are going to flow to the consumer, either directly or indirectly. Zarrilli noted that its unclear what those price hikes might look like, and whoratepayers, utilities, or some combination of actorswill shoulder them. The trade war may be felt especially acutely in New York, where developers are extending a transmission line from Quebec all the way to Queens in order to pump much-needed hydroelectric power into New York City. Once the Champlain Hudson Power Express is operational in 2026, New York City is guaranteed hydroelectric power during the summer months. It is not, however, guaranteed that reliable power during the winter. As the state has electrified its power grid, energy demand has been increasing during the cold weather months. New York power grid operators are preparing for demand during the winter to double over the next 30 years. But whether the state gets the hydropower it needs to provide reliable, renewable power during that peak demand now depends on how the trade war plays out. The fallout could be actually catastrophic, said Adrienne Esposito, executive director at the nonprofit Citizens Campaign for the Environment, which has helped push New York City to adopt a climate plan that mirrors the states. It defies logic. This article originally appeared in Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Sign up for its newsletter here.
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E-Commerce
Before Donald Trump took office, Memphis-based staff for the environmental advocacy group the Southern Environmental Law Center used a tool called EJScreen to measure air quality in South Memphis. The resource tracked air quality over time, allowing SELC staffers to quantify the cumulative impacts of air pollution in the neighborhood. But when the Trump administration began shutting down federal environmental websites and scrubbing the words climate change from government websites, EJScreen went dark. The disappearance of this resource is just one example of how the SELCs work has been stymied in recent months, according to geospatial analyst Libbie Weimer. In just the first two weeks of his presidency, Trumps administration removed dozens of web pages and datasets from the official sites of the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Council on Environmental Quality, NASA, and others. At the SELCwhich specializes in legal environmental advocacy in the Southmany of those pages were part of the organizations daily efforts to track regional concerns. To address this loss, Weimer and her team have created a guide that preserves archived environmental sites. The guide, published last Friday, includes three main sections: data archives, including suggested places to search for archived raw data, metadata, and scientific papers; a web clone section, which includes links to cloned tools like EJScreen and the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Environmental Justice Index; and a web archive, which guides users through the Wayback Machine to find old pages. The whole guide is underpinned by a searchable list that allows users to quickly find specific lost sites. [Screenshot: FC] Where I work, I serve a staff of over 100 people, plus our dozens of community-based partner organizations across six states, Weimer says. Overnight, those people stopped having access to the information they use on a daily basis to protect the air, water, land, wildlife, and people where they live. The guide is my attempt to reconnect folks to the information and data they need. The guide runs off a website that Weimer maintains by cross-referencing other grassroots lost-site trackers with a list of the sites that are important to her staff. Critically, Weimar notes, shes not the only person tracking the Trump administrations culling of federal environmental web pages: The Data Rescue Tracker, Public Environmental Data Partners, and Climate Change Transparency Project have already embarked on a similar mission. The purpose is simple: We believe that everyone should continue to have access to public information and data, Weimer says. These resources belong to us and were created for the public good.
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E-Commerce
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