This story originally appeared on Truck Parking Club and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
How New York 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 New York 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.
New York EV policies
These are the incentives, goals, policies, and privileges offered for EVs and other alternative-fuel vehicles in New York.
Government goals, policies, and requirements:
- By 2035, all sales or leases of new light-duty passenger vehicles must be zero-emission vehicles
- By 2035, all sales of new off-road vehicles and equipment must be zero-emission vehicles
- By 2045, all sales or leases of new medium- and heavy-duty vehicles must be zero-emission vehicles
- Allocated up to $250 million to support EVs and address charging infrastructure gaps throughout the state, including interstate EV charging, airport charging hubs, and EV model communities
- Beginning with model year 2025, manufacturers will be required to sell zero-emission trucks as an increasing percentage of their annual sales
- Beginning in July 2027, school districts may only acquire zero-emission school buses
- By the end of 2035, all state agency light-duty fleet vehicles must be zero-emission, with medium- and heavy-duty vehicles following suit by 2040
- New construction of non-residential and publicly funded parking facilities with 50-200 spaces must prewire 20% for EV charging
Monetary incentives:
- Rebates to purchase or lease new EVs
- Rebates to install EV charging stations at public parking facilities, workplaces, and multiunit dwellings
- Vouchers for all-electric and hydrogen fuel cell electric heavy-duty trucks and buses
- Vouchers for zero-emission school buses
- Funds to replace or convert diesel medium- and heavy-duty vehicles
- Rebates to purchase or lease zero-emission vehicles and grants to install related fueling infrastructure (for cities, towns, villages, counties, and New York City boroughs)
- Funding for projects that research or develop advanced technologies to enhance mobility, improve efficiency, reduce congestion, and diversify transportation methods and fuels
Privileges, protections, and exemptions:
- Exempts EVs from state emissions inspections
- Multifamily housing occupants and owners within homeowners associations must be allowed to install EV chargers in their parking spaces
- Only actively charging EVs may park in EV charging spaces
- Exempts EVs from HOV lane occupancy restrictions
External collaborations:
- Multi-State Zero-Emission Vehicle Task Force
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.
