The former Tesla Exec affirms that the EV industry will increase, not shrink, after the death of $ 7,500 of tax credit: “the market is established”

Addressing CNBC Thursday, McNeill expressed his confidence that despite the recent expiration of a key EV tax credit, the industry will continue to increase, reinforced by more choice of models and the availability of low -cost vehicles.

He underlined Europe as a case study, noting that when countries like Germany returned their subsidies a few years ago, the electric vehicle market “surprisingly … continued to grow”.

McNeill suggested that the United States was ready for a similar result, declaring: “The market is established, and we are probably ready to have a market that can … develop without subsidies.”

In the American market catches up, there are 65 different EV models now available for consumers, and during the combination of electric vehicles and hybrids, one in four car sold in the United States is now electrified, he added.

The recent end of the tax credit created a “traction in demand,” he said, leading to a quarter loaded for dealerships. However, this wave of sales was not limited to a single company. While Tesla saw an increase of 7%, GM doubled its sales of electric vehicles in the same quarter compared to the previous year. McNeill interpreted this as a positive sign, especially since many of these sales were intended for low -cost models.

The expiring tax credit bomb

McNeill’s remarks occurred in the middle of a wave of responses at the end of the EV tax credit. Ford CEO Jim Farley, when interviewed at the Ford Pro Accelerate summit in Detroit, has taken a practically opposite race, providing that the VE industry will be reduced by half.

He said electric vehicles will remain a “dynamic industry” in the future, but also said that “would be smaller, much smaller than we thought.” The end of the consumer’s incentive of $ 7,500 is a “change of game”, he added, providing for a sharp drop in sales of electric vehicles at 5% of the industry, compared to the current level of around 10% to 12%.

“Customers are annoying,” said Farley, adding that “customers are not interested in an $ 75,000 electric vehicle. They find them interesting. They are fast. They are effective. You are not going to the service station. But they are dear. ”

Load your home with your car

McNeill said that an argument in favor of the electric vehicle sector which continues to grow is the growing utility of vehicles far beyond transport. He discussed the emerging trend of vehicles acting as sources of energy for houses. This “bidirectional” capacity, he explained, allows electric vehicles to push the energy in the grid. He shared a personal example, declaring that his Silverado EV can feed his house for two weeks, eliminating the need for a separate generator.

Farley has accepted, saying that “partial electrification is more interesting for customers than we thought … We think that hybrid, EV plug-in, e-meets, these kinds of partial electrical solutions, America will fall in love or already falling in love.” He added that this is particularly a big problem in states like Florida and Texas.

McNeill said that his local public service had offered him a “big break on my public service bills” in exchange for allowing them to access only 20% of the battery capacity of his vehicle. Although only a handful of EV currently offer this feature, he thinks that “we will see more and more.”

Policy supporting this integration is more likely to come from the level of the state rather than from the federal government, he argued. Because the United States has more than a thousand decentralized networks, it is more a state problem, and the states have generally been “more progressive” in the creation of incentives to help public services reduce electricity costs.

For this story, Fortune Used a generative AI to help an initial project. An editor checked the accuracy of the information before the publication.

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