You have until September 30,2025 to buy an electric vehicle and get $7,500 in tax credits, or $4,000 if you purchase a second hand vehicle.
Have you ever wanted an EV? Go. Buy. One. Now.
You don’t even have to go somewhere to do it. We bought ours online in May of 2021. A few days later, a shiny, second-hand 2018 electric vehicle was delivered to our front curb. We have never looked back. We have carpooled with toddlers, used as our home office, and road tripped to see faraway friends. All done, without the cost and the fumes from one drop of gasoline. 
You can live this dream too! Say goodbye to stinky gas stations; say hello to charging your car while comfortably tucked in bed. Or, if you decide to take a summer-long trip to, say, Canada, you can fast-charge in the time it takes for your kids to pee and catch up on a seven-minute episode of Bluey.
I could reminisce about our amazing road trip for hours, but let’s also talk about the facts of the EV.
Range anxiety: Our car’s computer optimizes charging options and determines the best charging sites along the road. During our trip to Canada, there were enough fast chargers along the route that we were never forced to stop overnight for a charge. Since our 2023 roadtrip, we have shuttled our kids to ultimate frisbee games across Virginia and Maryland. We’ve driven for hours to satisfy the 40-hour driving requirement for two of our kids to qualify for their driver’s licenses. We’ve taken day trips to the beach, and to the mountains, few of which required a recharge. In the seven years since the car was built, the battery range has declined only 4% – from 240 miles to 230 today.
Charging cost: Not only is charging an electric car cheaper than filling a tank with fossil fuels at a gas station – charging at home is less than half the price of charging at a public charger. We drove from Washington, DC, to Lake Kiamika in Quebec and back. With Covid restrictions easing, we caught up with old friends. We visited colleges in Connecticut. We stayed at an earthship in Massachusetts. We watched the sun set over the ocean in Nantucket. We camped by pristine lakes in Quebec. We took the mandatory pictures at Niagara Falls. And we canoed on Beaver River in Ontario. Even using public chargers, our entire 24-day trip cost less than $300 in electrons.
Cost of ownership: Since buying our car in 2021, we have driven 25,000 miles and never once had to pay for an oil change or brake change. In four years, we have paid a grand total of $500 in maintenance (some of the maintenance was covered by the warranty). Our non-expiring emissions sticker (duh, it’s electric) saves us $10 every four years and, more importantly, eliminates the associated hassle. One slightly deflating issue is that we are due for a tire change about 10,000 miles earlier than a gas powered car. But when you also throw in the non-monetary advantages – the extra space in our trunk and frunk (enough for our road trip luggage, plus four days of groceries for 10 people), the quietness (on our trip, we heard every word of the entire Percy Jackson series), and the torque (a thrill for this ex-minivan driver) – the scales tip further in favor of EVs.
Cost of purchase: My husband cringed when he recently dug up this number. In 2021, we spent a whopping $42,000, without any tax credits, on the exact same car you can now buy for $27,000, before the $4,000 tax credit (available to those under federal income thresholds). And no, you do not need to buy a Tesla. There are currently 2,579 electric cars in the Carvana inventory, including Acura, Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Dodge, FIAT, Ford, Genesis, GMC, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar, Jeep, Kia, Lexus, Lucid, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, MINI, Nissan, Polestar, Porsche, Ram, Rivian, smart, Subaru, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo. Just filter by “electric,” check if the model qualifies for federal tax credits, and do it. Don’t like Carvana? CarMax has 865 electric options ready to be shipped to you.
All you need to do is click.
The September 30 deadline isn’t just about saving money – it’s about timing your entry into a transportation shift that’s happening with or without federal incentives. If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to go electric, this might be it. The credits won’t last forever, but the roads ahead are electric either way.
PS the featured image of this post is not my car but I wish it were;-)