The tax and spending bill Congress passed last week is a mixed bag for the automotive industry, according to a major automaker trade group.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents many automakers from around the world that make and sell vehicles in the U.S., lamented the fast wind-down of the electric-vehicle tax credit that’s boosted segment sales.
The credit is scheduled to end in October and “will be extremely challenging to EV adoption and hurt consumer affordability, especially as manufacturers and dealers right-size automotive inventories,” said alliance President John Bozzella in a statement on the bill.
At the same time, the group expressed relief that a proposed annual electric-vehicle and battery fee to feed the Highway Trust Fund didn’t materialize. “That’s a debate that should occur when Congress takes up a highway bill in the future,” Bozzella said.
Meanwhile, the group praised the preservation of two domestic industry features it says will help keep U.S. auto manufacturing competitive.
Bozzella cheered the fact that the bill maintained the Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit created in the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act. The tax credit incentivizes clean-energy manufacturin, and Bozzella called its preservation “the big one” among the bill’s benefits to the auto industry.
“The Senate recognized this tax credit is working – bringing battery manufacturing back to the U.S. and supporting supply chains that bypass China,” he said. “By restoring the workability of this key credit and maintaining prohibitions against Chinese companies from credit eligibility, senators preserved billions in auto-related manufacturing investments and jobs.”
The alliance is also pleased the bill continues to protect the ultra-wideband spectrum that powers wireless safety technology. It had warned that the earlier House version of the bill would have set in motion a plan to auction large portions of U.S. spectrum rights and thereby cause safety tech in “millions of vehicles” to “stop working.”
