Quebec budget: Electric vehicle rebates to be phased out by 2027

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QUEBEC — The provincial government is phasing out its Roulez Vert electric vehicle rebates after concluding that it no longer needs it to promote the purchase of electric vehicles.

The rebate, which the government first introduced in 2012, “was necessary to begin the electrification of the vehicle fleet in Quebec at a time when there were few models available, with more limited capacity, and when the charging network was emerging,” says Quebec’s budget plan released Tuesday. At the time, EVs represented only 0.02 per cent of the vehicles on Quebec roads. Today, there are more than 240,000 electric vehicles in Quebec, the government says.

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But with the market for EVs growing — more than one in five new vehicles sold in Quebec were electric in the third quarter of 2023 — the government has decided consumers no longer need the additional incentive and is gradually reducing it to zero by 2027.

The rebate currently pays consumers back $7,000 for new fully electric or fuel cell vehicles and $5,000 for new plug-in hybrids costing up to $65,000. In 2022, the government reduced the rebate from its initial $8,000, citing similar reasons.

For fully electric or fuel cell vehicles, the rebate will be $4,000 as of Jan. 1, 2025, $2,000 as of Jan. 1, 2026, and disappear as of Jan. 1, 2027.

Quebecers are still eligible for the federal rebate, which offers $5,000 for new electric vehicles and $2,500 for plug-in electric hybrids, until March 31, 2025. Quebec is also maintaining a $600 rebate for installing home-charging stations and up to $5,000 for workplace or multi-unit residential building charging stations.

The budget plan didn’t specify how much eliminating the rebate would save the government, but said the money saved “will be used to fight climate change” without providing details. Electric vehicle rebates cost the government $228 million in 2022-23, residential charging stations another $10.9 million and multi-dwelling charging stations $7.5 million.

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