Stanislaus utilities help make electric cars more affordable. Try this online calculator
Stanislaus County has been slow to switch to electric vehicles, but it’s not for lack of incentives.
Utilities here offer one-time rebates and monthly billing discounts for charging a car or pickup truck at home. That’s on top of the federal tax credit of up to $7,500 for buying an EV.
Advocates say these vehicles help reduce the fossil fuel emissions behind climate change.
The Modesto Irrigation District, the county’s largest power provider, has an online calculator for customers intrigued by EVs. It estimates the cost of buying and powering various models, compared with gasoline vehicles. The monthly EV savings were close to $100 in a test run by The Modesto Bee (details below).
Incentives also are offered by the Turlock Irrigation District, which serves parts of Stanislaus and Merced counties. The same goes for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., which supplies other portions.
The utilities’ biggest savings are through “time-of-use” billing, rewarding customers for using electricity at night. Power generation costs are much higher when air conditioners, factories and other users are humming.
MID and TID provide time-of-use billing only to EV owners. PG&E offers it to other customers as well.
Stanislaus had 6,696 registered EVs as of September, just 1.6% of its total cars and pickups, the California Energy Commission reported. The statewide rate was about 8%.
The CEC promotes home chargers as well as public installations where owners can pay to recharge during travel.
Details on federal incentive
The federal tax credit ranges from $2,917 to $7,500, depending on battery capacity and whether the vehicles were made in nations complying with free-trade rules. The credit is nonrefundable, meaning the buyer cannot get back more than is owed in taxes.
The full rebate applies in 2024 to all Tesla models and to the Chevrolet Bolt, Chrysler Pacifica and Ford F-150 Lightning. More details are at www.irs.gov.
EVs tend to have higher sticker prices than gasoline vehicles, but they could be cheaper in the long run thanks to the incentives.
Tesla is by far the most popular EV in Stanislaus County, the CEC dashboard shows. And it is sort of a local product, made in Fremont by a workforce that includes commuters from here.
Details on TID programs
The Turlock district offers a rebate of up to $500 for an EV purchase by most users and up to $1,200 for low-income customers. Chargers have their own rebates, up to $300 for most residents and $400 for low-income.
TID has discounts for EV charging outside the peak demand from noon to 9 p.m. weekdays. The rate is either 7.72 or 8.38 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending on time of year. The regular residential rates range from 10.16 to 14.36 cents per kilowatt-hour. The top rate is for homes with especially high consumption per month.
More information is at www.tid.org.
What MID offers for EVs
The Modesto district has rebates of up to $350 for installing EV chargers.
MID’s entire time-of-use discount is available from 11 p.m. on weeknights to 1 p.m. the next afternoon, and at all times on weekends and holidays. A partial reduction happens on weekdays from 1 to 5 p.m. and from 8 to 11 p.m. The highest rates apply from 5 to 8 p.m.
MID’s online calculator uses several factors to estimate EV costs for various models. They include the sticker price, the federal tax credit, the billing discounts and average miles driven per day. All of this is then weighed against gasoline car costs.
The Bee tried out the calculator by comparing a 2023 Chevy Bolt with a 2015 gasoline Cruze from the same maker. The latter cost $136 per month assuming 30 miles a day on fuel costing $4.50 a gallon. The EV was $40 a month.
More information on MID incentives is at www.mid.org.
PG&E has a calculator, too
Most of northern and central California is served by PG&E. It has its own EV calculator at www.pge.com, along with details on incentives.
California has banned the sale of new gasoline cars as of 2035 as part of its climate effort. It also seeks to electrify commercial trucks, railroads and other parts of the transportation system.
All of this would not be truly green unless the power is generated by wind, solar and other carbon-friendly sources. The state’s utilities are shifting away from natural gas under a separate mandate.
The clean transportation movement also involves building new homes within an easy walk or bike ride of stores, transit stops and other destinations.
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