Despite the end of federal electric vehicle tax credits, interest in EVs growing in Iowa

In the weeks before the federal electric vehicle tax credits expired, sales consultants at car dealerships were fielding calls from customers asking how they could purchase an EV before the credits went away.

Deepak Reddy, a sales consultant at McGrath Chevyland in Cedar Rapids, was one of them. Reddy, who has been with the dealership since June 2024, said he worked with many drivers who were scrambling to purchase a discounted EV before the credits were formally repealed on Sept. 30, under the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law in July.

“Especially in the last month of the credits, there was kind of a mad dash,” Reddy said.

The tax credits provided up to $7,500 for new EVs and up to $4,000 for used EVs.

Reddy said calls were coming into the local dealership from all over the Midwest asking if McGrath still had EVs in stock since many dealerships were sold out of the cars.

He said the majority of people who were calling in were “looking for options just to get that rebate last second before it went away” and that the vast majority — about 99 percent of the callers — were familiar with the tax credit program.

As the end of September approached, Reddy said more EVs and hybrid vehicles were being sold and the dealership’s stock was low.

“As we were getting closer toward the 30th, it just kind of increased in the momentum,” he said. “We sold out basically all of our EV Equinoxes. At the end of the month, I think we had one left, maybe.”

Since then, Reddy said EV sales have “definitely” decreased.

“We do still get people coming in asking, since it was so recent, so people still have that thought. But they don't feel like the current price is what they should be,” he said. “So, I think there's going to be some reaction from the manufacturers, because they don't want to keep these vehicles on their lots forever, and they want to keep producing them, just so they can have different lines of vehicles to compete with.”

However, he said there is concern about how many EVs can be sold given the vehicles’ cost without a tax credit.

“There's sticker shock now … the price is so much higher than it was before, but there are people still interested in them,” Reddy said.

Reddy said drivers who own EVs own them for a variety of reasons — ranging from environmental concerns, an interest in the car’s technology and the financial savings component — which he believes will continue.

More EVs on Iowa’s roads

The number of EVs on Iowa’s roads has continued to grow in recent years.

According to data from the Iowa Department of Transportation, nearly all of Iowa’s 99 counties saw an increase in electric vehicle registrations within the last 18 months — mirroring a similar trend between December 2022 and June 2024.

Between June 2024 and June 2025, electric vehicle registrations statewide increased by 33 percent, with 17,488 EVs registered in mid-2024 and 23,264 in the summer of 2025.

The Iowa DOT, which collects data on EV registrations every six months to update cumulative totals, reported that the number of EVs by counties varies from five registered EVs in Ringgold County, to 5,466 EVs registered in Polk County.

Eastern Iowa also saw an increase in the number of EVs on the road.

The number of EVs registered in Linn County jumped from 1,832 to 2,461 registrations, marking a 34 percent increase.

Johnson County’s registration numbers grew from 1,845 EVs to 2,326 — a 26 percent increase — and Scott County reported a registration jump from 1,131 to 1,470 EVs in the county, showing an increase of nearly 30 percent.

Supporting EV infrastructure

As more Iowans are pivoting to driving EVs, there has been a bigger push to support electric vehicle-related infrastructure across the state.

The City of Iowa City has been backing more electric vehicle infrastructure through its “IC EVs Everywhere” initiative.

Sarah Gardner, the climate action coordinator for Iowa City, said the initiative stems from the EV Readiness Plan that Iowa City participated in about four years ago. She said the plan called for cities to have basic EV information publicly available, mainly pointing to where residents can charge their vehicles.

Gardner said the EVs Everywhere Initiative and investing in EV infrastructure in general is important to Iowa City because its residents are continuing to adopt EVs, rather than gas-powered cars.

“From our outreach and engagement events, we have had more people who are interested in an EV being their next vehicle,” Gardner said.

The city hosts a Climate Fest each year, and for the past five years, Gardner said the EV car show has been the best attended event at the festival.

“We have seen growing participation in that every year, and we get lots of very interesting questions from residents,” Gardner said. “We've heard from residents afterward who've gone out and purchased an EV, (saying it) gave them the confidence to do so.”

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Aside from educating residents, Gardner said Iowa City’s Climate Action team has made several commitments to the city to further EV accessibility.

“The first thing we've done is we've made a commitment that every parking ramp in Iowa City would have level two chargers,” Gardner said, adding that the city achieved that goal in 2020.

She said the city maintains data on the chargers’ use, and high demand has led to additional chargers being installed in two public ramps.

Gardner said city also has been working toward offering public charging at city parks, the airport and other public spaces for Iowans to use. She said the city is currently pursuing grant funding to pay for additional chargers.

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“We don't have any in parks yet, but we've had ongoing discussions with the Climate Action Commission about which parks might make the most sense to get EV chargers and at their direction, have been looking at parks that have a lot of dwell time, which is a fancy way of saying parks where people are going to park their car for a while,” she said.

Although the city is expanding its public charging options, Gardner said most EV charging happens at home.

“Public parking infrastructure is good for easing range anxiety, but in reality, 80 percent of EV charging happens at home, and this has become even more, I would say, important to recognize in Iowa since the implementation of the EV fuel tax, because any public charging is taxed and any home charging is not (taxed) for charging at a residence,” she said.

The Electric Fuel Excise Tax, which began in July 2023, charges EV owners about 0.026 per kWh to charge their vehicles in public charging stations but not at their homes.

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To supplement that, Gardner said the city has been offering a grant for apartment and condominium buildings to install EV chargers on their property to be shared by complex residents.

She said the grant is up to $10,000 and covers about 50 percent of the cost of installing a charger, with the funding coming from Iowa DOT.

Despite the EV tax credits going away, Reddy said he still is fielding many questions from drivers looking to purchase an EV.

Because of that, Reddy said he thinks it’s possible car manufacturers could implement some sort of incentive to keep EV sales up.

“It's possible there might be something like an efficiency discount, or something like that, even from the government,” he said. “No one really knows what's going to happen, right? It's still kind of the Wild West.”

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Olivia Cohen covers energy and environment for The Gazette and is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. She is also a contributing writer for the Ag and Water Desk, an independent journalism collaborative focusing on the Mississippi River Basin.

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Comments: olivia.cohen@thegazette.com