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    Senate Proposal Ends Tax Cuts for Clean Energy, Disappointing Climate Advocates

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    A Senate tax package softens some blows imposed on renewables by a House version of the bill. But it still terminates many credits for clean power.Climate advocates, Democrats, and even some House Republicans who last month had supported a tax package that gutted federal support for clean energy were hoping the Senate would make fixes to protect energy manufacturing and jobs.But on Monday, Senate Republicans disappointed them, proposing to quickly end most tax breaks for wind and solar power, electric vehicles and other clean energy.Draft legislation released by the Senate Finance Committee would terminate or scale back most of the major tax incentives for clean energy contained in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the Biden administration’s signature climate law.The plan would eliminate within six months a $7,500 consumer tax credit for purchases of electric vehicles as well as home energy rebates for things like electric heat pumps and induction stoves. A tax credit for homeowners who install solar panels on rooftops would end within 180 days. A subsidy for making hydrogen fuels would expire this year.Federal tax credits for wind and solar power, which have been in place for decades but were made more lucrative under the Inflation Reduction Act, would be rapidly phased out. Wind and solar companies could qualify for the full tax break only if they began construction in the next six months. They would receive 60 percent of the tax break if they began construction in 2026, and 20 percent of the tax credit if they began construction in 2027. Projects built after that would get nothing.That’s a slightly longer runway for renewable energy than is in the House version of the bill, which would have ended those tax breaks almost immediately.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Trade and Tax Policies Start to Stall U.S. Battery Boom

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      Battery companies are slowing construction or reconsidering big investments in the United States because of tariffs on China and the proposed rollback of tax credits.Battery manufacturing began to take off in the United States in recent years after Congress and the Biden administration offered the industry generous incentives.But that boom now appears to be stalling as the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers try to restrict China’s access to the American market.From South Carolina to Washington State, companies are slowing construction or reconsidering big investments in factories for producing rechargeable batteries and the ingredients needed to make them.A big reason for that is higher trade barriers between the United States and China are fracturing relationships between suppliers and customers in the two countries. At the same time, Republicans are seeking to block battery makers with ties to China, as well as those that rely on any Chinese technology or materials, from taking advantage of federal tax credits. The industry is also dealing with a softening market for electric vehicles, which Republicans and Mr. Trump have targeted. The China-related restrictions — included in the version of Mr. Trump’s domestic policy bill passed by the House — would be very difficult for many companies to operate under. China is the world’s top battery manufacturer and makes nearly all of certain components.The Trump policy bill highlights a difficult dilemma. The United States wants to create a homegrown battery industry and greatly reduce its dependence on China — and many Republican lawmakers want to end it altogether. But China is already so dominant in this industry that it will be incredibly hard for the United States to become a meaningful player without working with Chinese companies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      If Elon Musk and Donald Trump Make Up, Don’t Be Surprised

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      For all the insults that Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump traded on Thursday, don’t be surprised if they make up again days from now. In the meantime, they both benefit.Elon Musk was once known for doing things. The entrepreneur reached a new peak of fame on Thursday for saying things. It was mostly bad things about President Trump.The spat was revelatory, it was epic, it was historic, at least according to the thousands of earnest and excited commentaries that were instantly published.It was also a well-timed outburst.Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump did not have a feud five days ago and might not have a feud five days from now. Until proven otherwise, all of this is theater. Think of it as the political version of professional wrestling. For a few hours, everyone was diverted by the spectacle of a brawl between the world’s richest man and its most powerful person.Mr. Trump took a break from tariffs and deportations. For Mr. Musk, the episode was even more valuable. His wealth comes from the promise that Tesla, his electric car company, will own a significant slice of the self-driving future. The launch of Tesla’s robotaxi business is next week in Austin. Skepticism abounds. The more attention it gets, the bigger a disappointment it could be.Mr. Musk’s SpaceX business is even more problematic. For all its promise to set up colonies on Mars, it is having trouble with the basics. The ninth flight test of SpaceX’s Starship program a few days ago saw both the reusable booster exploding and, 40 minutes later, the rocket itself blowing up. It wasn’t the first such failure either.SpaceX, which is owned by Mr. Musk, left, is having trouble with the basics of spaceflight. Pool photo by Brandon BellWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Germans Are Buying More Electric Cars, but Not Teslas

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      Drivers in the country, Europe’s largest car market, are avoiding vehicles from Tesla, which has seen a drop in sales in other countries as well.Tesla sales in Germany dropped in May for the fifth month in a row, as demand for the electric vehicle maker continued to slide across much of Europe, despite Elon Musk’s efforts to turn his focus away from his U.S. government activities and back to his companies.Registrations of new Tesla cars in Germany, Europe’s largest car market, dropped more than a third from the same month last year, data released by the country’s Federal Motor Transport Authority, K.B.A., showed on Wednesday.Tesla sales in other European countries have also remained depressed, falling more than 67 percent in France and 29 percent in Spain in May.Only Norway stood out as an exception, with Tesla selling 2,600 cars in May, more than triple the number sold a year earlier. Sales were led by deliveries of Tesla’s newly revamped version of its most popular vehicle, the Model Y.In neighboring Sweden, Volkswagen sold nearly twice as many of its latest electric model, the ID.7, as the new Model Y from Tesla, whose overall sales in the country dropped 53 percent.Mr. Musk has tried to downplay the extent of Tesla’s losses in Europe, telling Bloomberg News in an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum that although it was the region where the brand faces its greatest challenges, “the European car market is quite weak.”But data from European markets does not support that claim. In Germany, sales of battery-powered cars grew nearly 45 percent in May, compared with a year earlier. In Spain, overall sales of electric cars grew 72 percent, while Tesla sales slid 19 percent.In Germany, demand for BYD, Tesla’s main E.V. rival, rose ninefold, the strongest showing of an electric vehicle producer from China. The company, which overtook Tesla as the world’s top seller of electric cars this year, has been making inroads in Europe, despite facing tariffs of 17 percent imposed by the European Union in 2024.Although Mr. Musk has left his role at the White House, Tesla sales have been affected by his foray into politics. In April, the company reported that its vehicle sales fell 13 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, as profit plunged to its lowest level in four years.The company has been hurt by protests against Mr. Musk’s support for President Trump and several far-right parties in France, Germany and Italy. More

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      New Jersey Turnpike to Replace Tesla Chargers After Contract Expires

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      The agency that runs the highway said it was switching to another company to provide chargers that work for electrical vehicles other than just Teslas.The agency that runs the New Jersey Turnpike is replacing the more than 60 superchargers for Tesla vehicles along the highway after the state did not renew its contract with the electric-car maker.New Jersey officials said in a statement on Friday that the state would shift to another company that would provide universal charging stations. The change, already underway, will almost triple the number of charging stations along the turnpike and the Garden State Parkway, a second major toll road, where chargers are being added for the first time.The decision drew an apparently irked response from the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk. “Sounds like corruption,” he wrote on his social media platform, X, on Friday night, without providing any evidence. Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.Thomas Feeney, a spokesman for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, which operates the highways, said that the decision was both about increasing the number of stations and providing chargers that were compatible with more than just Tesla vehicles. “Our goal is to serve as many E.V. owners as possible across all our service areas,” he said.The state has amended its agreement with Applegreen, an Irish company that already manages restaurants and stores in the turnpike’s service areas, to include its new line of fast charging stations to replace the Tesla equipment and build new stations elsewhere.In a message posted to X on Friday, Tesla said it would continue to offer its superchargers in New Jersey. “We have been preparing for 3 years for this potential outcome by building 116 stalls off the New Jersey Turnpike, ensuring no interruption for our customers,” said the post, which included a map of the charging stations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tesla Protesters Claim a Victory as Elon Musk Leaves Trump’s Side

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      The activists behind the Tesla Takedown campaign say they intend to expand beyond protests at the company’s showrooms.Elon Musk left the Trump administration with a White House send-off on Friday. That was a victory of sorts for a group of activists who have spent much of the last four months organizing protests against Mr. Musk’s right-wing politics by targeting his electric car company, Tesla.A day later, on Saturday, hundreds of people showed up at more than 50 Tesla showrooms and other company locations to continue their protests.The campaign at Tesla sites began in February after Joan Donovan, a sociology professor at Boston University, gathered friends to hold a demonstration at a Tesla showroom in Boston, and posted a notice about her plan on Bluesky using the hashtag #TeslaTakedown. She said she had been inspired by a small protest at Tesla’s electric vehicle chargers in Maine soon after President Trump’s inauguration.“That first one on Feb. 15 was me and like 50 people,” Ms. Donovan said. “And then the next week it was a hundred more people, and then a hundred more after that, and it’s just grown.”Tesla Takedown has since expanded into an international movement, staging demonstrations at Tesla factories, showrooms and other locations in countries including Australia, Britain, France and Germany as well as across the United States. The campaign’s U.S. growth has been fueled in large part by anger over Mr. Musk’s leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency, which has slashed government spending and dismissed tens of thousands of federal workers while gaining access to sensitive personal data.Mr. Musk departed the administration after his involvement in politics hurt his companies, especially Tesla. Sales of the company’s cars have tumbled since Mr. Trump took office and the start of protests against the company.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Tariffs Turn Porsche’s Headwinds Into a ‘Violent Storm’

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      The storied sports car maker, which was facing challenges from China and slumping demand for electric cars, now has to grapple with tariffs from the Trump administration.This year was already shaping up to be a tough one for Porsche. Chinese customers were losing interest in the luxury sports car, its bet on electric vehicles was failing with drivers long enamored by the rumble of its combustion engines and its stock price hovered near record lows.Then President Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on all cars imported to the United States starting in April. Last week, he doubled down on that, threatening a 50 percent tariff for all products from the European Union, sending Porsche’s shares tumbling further and E.U. leaders and auto executives scrambling to make a deal.All of Europe’s leading carmakers have been hit by the tariff turbulence, at a time when they are already facing increasing competition from Chinese automakers. But unlike BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen, Porsche manufactures its vehicles exclusively in Germany, leaving it more vulnerable to the combined threat of advancements from China’s rivals and tariff increases in the United States.“It is literally a perfect storm,” said Harald Hendrikse, a managing director covering the European auto sector at Citi Research. “You have a triple threat, which is China, an E.V. strategy that was wrong — despite being lauded at the time — and then Trump’s tariffs, which nobody had guessed would be as severe as they are.”That has led Porsche to scale back its forecast for the year, by about 2 billion euros, or $2.2 billion. Its profit margin range is also expected to drop between 6.5 percent and 8.5 percent, from 10 percent to 12 percent.“Our market in China has literally collapsed,” Porsche’s chief executive, Oliver Blume, told shareholders at the company’s annual conference on May 21. “U.S. import tariffs are weighing on our business.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Republican Vote Against E.V. Mandate Felt Like an Attack on California, Democrats Say

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      For decades, California has been able to adopt its own emissions regulations, effectively setting the bar for carmakers nationally. And for just as long, Republicans have resented the state’s outsize influence.There is little question that California leaders already see fossil fuels as a relic of the past.At the Southern California headquarters of the state’s powerful clean-air regulator, the centerpiece art installation depicts in limestone a petrified gas station. Fuel nozzles lie on the ground in decay, evoking an imagined extinction of gas pumps.For more than half a century, the federal government has allowed California to set its own stringent pollution limits, a practice that has resulted in more efficient vehicles and the nation’s most aggressive push toward electric cars. Many Democratic-led states have adopted California’s standards, prompting automakers to move their national fleets in the same direction.With that unusual power, however, has come resentment from Republican states where the fossil fuel industry still undergirds their present and future. When Republicans in Congress last week revoked the state’s authority to set three of its mandates on electric vehicles and trucks, they saw it not just as a policy reversal but also as a statement that liberal California should be put in its place.“We’ve created a superstate system where California has more rights than other states,” Representative Morgan Griffith, who represents rural southwestern Virginia, said in an interview. “My constituents think most folks in California are out of touch with reality. You see this stuff coming out of California and say, ‘What?’”Federal law typically pre-empts state law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. But in 1967, the federal government allowed smoggy California to receive waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency to enact its own clean-air standards that were tougher than federal limits, because the state historically had some of the most polluted air in the nation. Federal law also allows other states to adopt California’s standards as their own under certain circumstances.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said last week that the state would fight in court to preserve its autonomy in setting emissions rules.Rich Pedroncelli/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Senate Republicans Kill California’s Ban on Gas-Powered Cars

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      In 50 years, California’s authority to set environmental rules that are tougher than national standards had never been challenged by Congress. Until now.The Senate on Thursday blocked California’s landmark plan to phase out the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles, setting up a legal battle that could shape the electric car market in the United States.The 51-44 vote was a victory for the oil and gas industry and for Republicans who muscled through the vote by deploying an unusual legislative tactic that Democrats denounced as a “nuclear” option that would affect the way the Senate operates way beyond climate policy.The repeal deals a blow to California’s ambition of accelerating the nation’s transition to electric vehicles. But the consequences will ripple across the country. That’s because 11 other states intended to follow California’s plan and stop selling new gas-powered cars by 2035. Together, they account for about 40 percent of the U.S. auto market.The resolution, which had already been approved by the House, now goes to President Trump’s desk. Mr. Trump, who opposes clean energy and has taken particular umbrage at California’s efforts to reduce the use of fossil fuels, is expected to sign it into law.California leaders have promised to challenge the Senate vote and try to restore the ban.“This Senate vote is illegal,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Democrat of California. “Republicans went around their own parliamentarian to defy decades of precedent. We won’t stand by as Trump Republicans make America smoggy again — undoing work that goes back to the days of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan — all while ceding our economic future to China.“California’s auto policy was allowed under permission granted by the Biden administration. The 1970 Clean Air Act specifies that California can receive waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency to enact clean air standards that are tougher than federal limits because the state has historically had the most polluted air in the nation. Federal law also allows other states to adopt California’s standards under certain circumstances.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More