Keep tax credits of up to $4,000 for used electric vehicles for lower-income buyers
Energy and environment
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
The credit is enacted by Congress, so the goal itself sits with government. Corporate behavior helps at the margin: automakers and dealers shape the used electric vehicle market and lobby on the policies around it. Automaker advocacy is documented on both sides: InfluenceMap found 14 of 15 major automakers opposed at least one electric vehicle policy, while Ceres organized major companies to defend clean economy tax credits in Congress in April 2025. Owners can align company lobbying behind the credit, but only Congress can keep it in the code. Congress has since ended this credit as well, terminating it for purchases after September 30, 2025, in the July 2025 budget law over largely supportive business advocacy, so the primary obstacle is partisan fiscal politics in Congress rather than corporate opposition.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Common Ground of the American People: Energy & the Environment, Program for Public Consultation / Voice of the People, survey July 2024
- Automakers and Climate Policy Advocacy: A Global Analysis, InfluenceMap, 2024-05-01
- Businesses return to Capitol Hill to champion clean energy tax credits as Congress debates budget reconciliation, Ceres, 2025-04
- The One Big Beautiful Bill: Impact on the IRA's Clean Energy Tax Credits, Steptoe LLP, 2025-07-23
- Ideology, not industry, snipped green energy tax credits, Axios Pro, 2025-05-23
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Tracked 60 proposals on lobbying and political spending in the 2024 proxy season filed to ensure that corporate advocacy aligns with climate objectives, as part of its climate proposal tracking with investors.
Filed a 2024 resolution at Toyota seeking fuller disclosure of the company's climate policy positions and lobbying alignment with net zero, amid investor concern that Toyota and its industry associations lobby to block climate policies.
Toyota AGM: shareholders reject climate lobbying resolution, Net Zero Investor, 2024-06
2 campaigns on record
Improve disclosure of the company's climate lobbying, policy positions and their alignment with its net zero commitments.
Result: Rejected; more than 90 percent of shareholders voted against.
Toyota AGM: shareholders reject climate lobbying resolution, Net Zero Investor, 2024-06
Report on the framework for identifying and addressing misalignment between the company's lobbying, including through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which opposed the Inflation Reduction Act, and its 2030 net zero goal.
Result: 492,189,469 votes for and 4,527,617,352 against at the May 31, 2023 meeting (about 9.8 percent of votes for and against); not passed.
Meta Platforms Form 8-K, 2023 annual meeting voting results, SEC EDGAR, 2023
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Common Ground of the American People's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.