This story originally appeared on Truck Parking Club and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
How Massachusetts is committing to electric vehicles
States across the country are paving the way for electric vehicles. This green topic is also harshly divided along red and blue lines—which is to say, it's heavily politicized. In North Carolina and Virginia, for instance, Republican leaders have rolled back or stunted EV initiatives adopted by Democrats.
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election, has criticized EVs and federal EV policies under President Joe Biden. Trump later backtracked and said he's "for electric cars" for a segment of the population after receiving an endorsement from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. But if elected, Trump still intends to undo Biden-era EV incentives.
To cover current EV incentives and get a sense of the impact that rollback could have, Truck Parking Club compiled information from the Department of Energy to illustrate EV regulations and support in Massachusetts as part of a broader national analysis.
This analysis only includes public incentives and policies and does not include efforts by private entities or utility providers. It lists major incentives and laws listed on the DOE website as of Oct. 1, which in many cases incentivize other alternative fuels like biodiesel and ethanol in addition to EVs. This list is intended to be comprehensive but not necessarily all-encompassing.
Massachusetts EV policies
These are the incentives, goals, policies, and privileges offered for EVs and other alternative-fuel vehicles in Massachusetts.
Government goals, policies, and requirements:
- Set infrastructure requirements to gradually increase zero-emission vehicles in state fleets, mandate new vehicle acquisitions be zero-emission, and add hundreds of EV charging stations to state properties
- Requires state vehicle purchases to be hybrid electric or alternative fuels to the maximum extent feasible
- By late 2030, will require new bus purchases by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to be zero-emission vehicles
- By late 2040, will require all MBTA buses to be zero-emission
- Beginning with model year 2025, will require manufacturers to sell zero-emission trucks as an increasing percentage of their annual sales in Massachusetts
- Requires any new commercial construction with over 15 parking spots to include at least one that is prewired for EV charging
- Requires transportation network companies to reduce emissions and adopt EVs
Monetary incentives:
- Rebates to purchase or lease new zero-emission vehicles, all-electric and hydrogen fuel cell electric trucks, buses, vans, pickups, and other light-duty vehicles (for residents, nonprofits, and businesses)
- Rebates to purchase or lease preowned zero-emission vehicles (for low-income residents)
- Provides some residents with free or discounted EV chargers
- Grants for projects that reduce diesel emissions in Massachusetts, including alternative fuel engine conversions, exhaust retrofits, and new vehicle purchases
- Grants to install EV charging stations at workplaces, educational campuses, multifamily housing developments, and other public access areas
- Grants to purchase or lease qualified EVs and zero-emission motorcycles (for local governments, public universities and colleges, and state agencies)
Privileges, protections, and exemptions:
- Exempts EVs from state emissions inspections
External collaborations:
- Multi-State Zero-Emission Vehicle Task Force
Other:
- When forging new and renewed transportation department contracts, will require fuel providers on the Massachusetts Turnpike to offer alternative fuels
- Developed a website to provide the public with information on EVs
Efforts across the nation
In the U.S., the transportation sector is the single leading source of pollution, contributing about 28% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2022. Three-quarters of Americans drive a car to work, most of them alone, and trucks transfer over 60% of freight. As a result, passenger vehicles and freight trucks offer a major opportunity to reduce pollution within the transportation sector.
Efforts to curb vehicular emissions vary widely from state to state. California has led the charge to reduce vehicular greenhouse gas emissions, adopting legislation in 2022 that will require all new vehicles sold in the state to be electric or plug-in hybrids by 2035. Medium- and heavy-duty vehicles like box trucks and semitrucks will follow suit in 2045. Since California's precedent-setting decision, 16 other states have adopted similar mandates with varying timelines and EV sales quotas.
Many states have adopted monetary incentives to promote EV adoption as well. Over half of states provide such incentives to install EV chargers and adopt electric or other alternative fuel buses. Meanwhile, 18 states and Washington D.C. provide monetary incentives for individual residents to purchase EVs. These efforts and others are funded in part by Volkswagen settlement funds, through which the company has paid $2 billion into EV charging infrastructure and $2.9 billion into a state mitigation trust fund in damages for cheating federal emissions tests on nearly 600,000 diesel vehicles.
On a national level, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is set to invest $7.5 billion in a network of EV charging stations, aiming to add 500,000 chargers across the country. The law includes formulaic state-by-state EV infrastructure funding each year between 2022 and 2026, estimated to total $4.2 billion in all.
Additionally, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provides Americans with a $7,500 tax credit for buying new EVs and $4,000 for used EVs, plus credits for commercial clean vehicles, EV charging station properties, continued development and manufacturing of clean energy and transportation technologies, and more.
Many of these efforts may face the chopping block if Trump wins this year's presidential election. The Republican nominee has said he will not allow states to ban gas-powered cars or trucks and may end the national EV tax credit. Meanwhile, Democratic nominee and current Vice President Kamala Harris has supported EV expansion efforts from within the current administration, even casting the tie-breaking vote on the pro-EV Inflation Reduction Act.
The outcome of the election is likely to have major implications for EV adoption and automobile regulation. Read the national analysis to get a deeper sense of efforts across the country—and which states may be most affected by federal policy changes.
This story features data reporting and writing by Paxtyn Merten and is part of a series utilizing data automation across 48 states and Washington D.C.
