Somebody making only $50K per year (or a family of 4 making $80K/year) has zero business buying a new car.
That is how to keep people poor. The government should not subsidize bad behaviour.
Nobody in their right mind will purchase a used electric car unless its pennies on the dollar of a new one. The repair costs are just too high at this point in time.
I don't disagree. In fact, my explanation above was basically saying that I don't think a lot of people in that income range and below usually buy new cars.
“That is how to keep people poor. The government should not subsidize bad behaviour.”
Again, that falls in line with the point I was making above. Making $57,000 is the minimum you would have to make in order to fully qualify for the credit. If you make less, you get less of a subsidy and are thus incentivized less to buy a new electric car.
“Nobody in their right mind will purchase a used electric car unless its pennies on the dollar of a new one. The repair costs are just too high at this point in time.”
The repair costs have been overblown by anti-EV pundits. It turns out that just like you don't have to expect to replace a conventional engine and transmission the minute the warranty expires, you also don't have to expect to replace an EV battery the minute the warranty expires.
This depends to some degree on which EV exactly. The Nissan Leaf has had problems in Arizona because the battery is passively air-cooled whereas the Chevy Volt is being reported to see virtually zero battery degradation after years of use (see #2 in common Volt misconceptions). This is because it uses an active liquid-cooled battery and it also prevents the battery from being charged over 80% or fall below 30%. These two things combined turn out to greatly improve battery life.