Post by Kasey Kagawa

As someone who’s no fan of hybrid cars and hybrid car owners, I couldn’t be happier at this news. My intense dislike of the owners of hybrid cars isn’t that hard to deduce, as I don’t think anyone likes people who look at you as some sort of meat-eating child molester for driving a car that doesn’t do 9 MPG less than is stated on the sticker, but a lot of people who hate hybrid car owners don’t actually hate hybrid cars. I happen to think that the millions of dollars that have been thrown at R&D for such cars could have been spent on things that are actual alternatives to gasoline, like biodiesel or hydrogen, instead of a fancier way of burning the same old dino-juice.

At any rate, the federal tax credit that gave hybrid owners up to $3,150 off their income taxes is dependent on how many hybrid cars a manufacturer sells per year, regardless of model or marque. Once the manufacturer sells 60,000 hybrid cars, the tax break for the next two quarters on all cars produced by that manufacturer is cut in half, and in half again for the next two quarters, after which the tax break vanishes completely. For example, Toyota hit their 60,000th car in Q2 2006, which means that the credit for all Toyota and Lexus models in Q3 and Q4 2006 was half of what it was at the beginning of the year, and after Q2 2007, Toyota and Lexus models will no longer be eligible for federal tax breaks.

The basic upshot of all of this? There’s now one less reason to buy a hybrid car, and that suits me just fine.

Beware The Vanishing Hybrid Tax Credit [Consumerist]