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If you're looking for an electric car bargain and you're braver than the average bear, you might want to check out Hertz, the car rental agency. After announcing big plans to purchase tens of thousands of EVs from Tesla and then Polestar, it's now liquidating a third of that fleet, the company told investors.

After Hertz went bankrupt during the early days of the pandemic, its big EV ambitions began in 2021, when the company revealed it wanted more than 20 percent of its rental fleet to be electric by 2022. To that end, it placed an order for 100,000 Tesla Model 3 sedans , then followed up with an order for 65,000 Polestar 2s .

By early 2023, it was still far short of the ambitious goal , in large part due to Tesla's inability to actually fill that order in time, and EVs still represent just 11 percent of the total Hertz rental fleet. In total, the Hertz EV fleet is around 60,000 vehicles. But it may not actually be that upset—it turns out that the electric rental cars haven't been the panacea it needed.

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Electrification is a big challenge if you're a small automaker. And Mazda is a small automaker, one that's in danger of being caught out by a range of inefficient gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles. But the Japanese company hasn't given up on electric vehicles, it says. In an interview with Auto News , Mazda CEO Masahiro Moro says the company will be an "intentional follower" in this space and that questionable demand for EVs justifies this strategy.

"One of the big issues for us is demand is uncertain," Moro said. "In the current market, the reality for electrification, in particular for battery EVs, is the pace is not that high. So we may start a little slower in terms of the ramp-up. Not necessarily in terms of timing, but the ramp-up."

In time, we should see a family of new Mazda-designed EVs built on a new platform. But the division that has to design them, called e-Mazda, was only created in November. Moro told Auto News that the division will focus on making EVs lighter and more affordable but won't develop compact or smaller EVs as the cost of batteries makes them unprofitable.

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The White House's plan to boost electric vehicle adoption came under heavy fire in Congress on Wednesday. Five Democratic Representatives joined the Republican majority to pass a bill that would prohibit the US Environmental Protection Agency from enacting stricter new corporate average fuel efficiency regulations that would require automakers to sell many more EVs by the year 2032.

Its passage in the House follows a letter-writing campaign by some US auto dealers to get the White House to abandon its climate targets as the dealers say they find it too difficult to sell electric vehicles.

As Ars detailed at the time , the tougher new regulations will require automakers to sell four times as many zero-emission vehicles to meet the new fleet averages. If the rules go into effect, two-thirds of all new passenger cars and light trucks would have to be EVs by 2032.

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For such a car-centric nation, it's a little depressing that the US lags behind the European Union and China when it comes to electric vehicle adoption. Without a large investment to redesign our towns and cities to make them walkable and accessible via public transport, switching en masse to electric cars is the main remaining avenue left to decarbonize our transport, after all. So it is rather encouraging to see signs that more US car buyers are opting to go electric, as sales have climbed 50 percent, year on year, as uptake reaches almost 8 percent.

According to Kelly Blue Book , US car buyers bought 313,086 battery EVs between the months of July and September 2023, compared to just 209,030 BEVs for the same three months of last year. Add in the 882 Toyota Mirai hydrogen fuel cell EVs and 68 Hyundai Nexo FCEVs that found homes in Q3 2023 and that's a 50.1 percent increase, year on year.

The cumulative totals for all of 2023 so far are also looking healthy. KBB estimates that 873,082 BEVs have been bought this year, versus 586,965 for the first nine months of 2022. Add in about 2,800 FCEVs compared to around 1,000 last year, and clean vehicle sales grew 49 percent, year on year.

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California is far and away the country's largest adopter of plug-in electric vehicles. Because of the state's ability to regulate its own air quality and spurred on by a large economy and plenty of affluent residents, the EV has gained plenty of traction in the Golden State. So much so that last month, California met its goal of having more than 1.5 million clean vehicles on the road two years ahead of schedule.

"No other state in the nation is doing as much as we are to accelerate our electric and zero emissions future," said California Governor Gavin Newsom. "California is setting the bar for climate action—and we're achieving our goals years ahead of schedule thanks to unprecedented investments secured in partnership with the legislature. We're making real progress on the world's most ambitious plan to end the tailpipe so our kids and grandkids are left with a cleaner, healthier planet."

California's Air Resources Board (CARB) began its Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program in 1990 with the intent of ameliorating the state's severe smog problem. By the early years of this century, air quality had improved to the point where CARB could begin using the ZEV regulations to help drive down climate emissions.

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By now, regular readers probably know that this year saw a major change to the Internal Revenue Service's Clean Vehicle Tax Credit, the consumer-facing incentive that aims to drive electric vehicle adoption here in the US. The tax credit was reformed by last year's Inflation Reduction Act and now places conditions on where a clean vehicle—a battery EV, a plug-in hybrid EV, or a hydrogen fuel cell EV—is manufactured, as well as the sourcing of its battery pack.

It was feared that these new rules would drastically reduce the number of eligible EVs once the sourcing requirements go into effect on April 18 , and now we can confirm that is the case. From tomorrow, only 10 new vehicles will qualify for the full $7,500. Half of the list is made up of vehicles from General Motors but also includes two models from Tesla, Ford's electric pickup truck, and plug-in hybrids belonging to Chrysler and Lincoln.

The full list of vehicles that qualify for the $7,500 clean vehicle tax credit is:

Enlarge / The Chevrolet Bolt EUV is one of the cheapest EVs on sale, starting at $27,200. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

You might have noticed that our car coverage is rather heavily biased toward electrified vehicles. Partly that's in recognition of the fact that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are now far higher than at any time since humans have walked the planet. But as I drive more and more EVs, it's also clear that they're actually just better in nearly every metric one might choose , other than when it comes to energy density and how long it takes to recharge. But this viewpoint puts me in a minority of Americans, according to a new survey of Americans, Canadians, and Australians.

The survey was conducted by Consider the Market, an Australian insurance comparison site, which found that only 33.8 percent of Americans say they'd prefer an EV to a traditional vehicle. By contrast, more than half (52.9 percent) say they want to stick with gasoline or diesel, a number that goes up to 70 percent in the 55–64 age bracket. Meanwhile, 43 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds would prefer an EV.

Which is unfortunate, because very few in that age bracket can afford them. In fact, purchase price ranked second as a barrier to EV adoption, at 54.5 percent. (The highest barrier to adoption was battery life and replacement costs, at 56.4 percent of survey respondents, which, as we've explained before, is more a problem of perception than reality .)

Enlarge / Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) speaking to reporters in the Hart Senate Office building on August 1, 2022, in Washington, DC. (credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Among the many provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 is a revamp of the federal tax credit for electric vehicles. The changes would restore the eligibility of Tesla and General Motors and includes a smaller credit for the purchase of a used EV. Despite this, the bill is running into opposition from the auto industry, and most of the EVs currently on sale would no longer qualify. But the bill's author, Senator Joe Manchin, has little time for complaints.

Currently, almost all new plug-in vehicles qualify for the plug-in electric drive vehicle credit, as laid out in Internal Revenue Code section 30D, introduced on the basis that the high cost of a lithium-ion traction battery is the main impediment to electric vehicles reaching price parity with their gasoline- or diesel-powered alternatives.

The credit is based on battery capacity. Starting at $2,917 for a plug-in vehicle with a 5 kWh pack, the credit increases by $417 per kWh to a maximum of $7,500. But there's a penalty for sales success—once an automaker has sold 200,000 qualifying plug-in vehicles, the credit begins to sunset. So far, this has only happened to Tesla and General Motors , both of which triggered the process in 2018.

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For much of the automobile's existence, speed was the statistic that sold . But the move to electric vehicles is emphasizing range over performance—ironic given the EV's inherent performance advantage here. While range remains a barrier to EV adoption, it takes second place to charging logistics . For about two-thirds of US drivers, the answer is simply to charge at home, parked in a garage or carport. But for the remaining third, that's not possible, and that's a problem.

From the post-war decades, a win at the racetrack or a new speed record translated to showroom success, both in the US and Europe. In turn, horsepower wars between automakers erupted every few years, steadily making our cars quicker and quicker. That trend is arguably accelerating—the near-instant torque of an electric motor means even SUVs that aren't supposed to be that sporty are capable of 0-to-60 times that would rival a supercar not too long ago.

But when every EV can launch from a stoplight fast enough to give you whiplash, pretty soon everyone needs a new reason to one-up each other. The range fixation makes plenty of sense, given the long charging times and the difficulty that would ensue from completely running out of charge while out in the world. But in practice, most of us drive fewer than 30 miles a day , and many EVs fill their days running errands and commuting, returning home to recharge to 100 percent overnight.