Tesla’s former global sales chief says there are so many EV models now that the market can grow without subsidies

• Jon McNeill was Tesla’s president for global sales and marketing from 2015 to 2018.
• McNeill said the expiry of federal EV incentives would not hurt the US EV market.
• Europe’s EV market continued to grow even when subsidies were rolled back there, he said.

The US EV market is mature enough to keep growing without government support, says former Tesla president Jon McNeill.

McNeill worked at Tesla from 2015 to 2018, overseeing the EV maker’s global sales and marketing. He told CNBC in an interview on Thursday that the Trump administration’s rollback of federal EV incentives would not hurt the domestic EV market’s growth.

“In Europe, France and Germany in particular rolled subsidies off a couple of years ago, and what happened after that, surprisingly, was the market continued to grow,” McNeill said.

“That’s largely because the models continue to roll out from other OEMs, much like they have here,” he added, using the acronym for original equipment manufacturers.

McNeill said the same thing would happen in the US, given how popular EVs have become in the country. Motor Intelligence, an auto data firm, said in January that EV and hybrid vehicles made up 20% of new car and truck sales in the US last year.

“The market’s established, and we’re probably ready to have a market that can grow without subsidies,” McNeill said on Thursday.

“We are offering lower-priced EVs, which is definitely having a positive impact on this market growing,” he added.

McNeill did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

In July, Congress passed President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which eliminated federal EV incentives. This included a $7,500 consumer tax credit for new EVs and a $4,000 consumer tax credit for used EVs. Both schemes expired on September 30.

American auto chiefs have mixed views on the fallout of Trump’s rollback.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that removing the tax credits would hurt Tesla’s competitors more.

“I think it would be devastating for our competitors and for Tesla slightly. But long-term, probably actually helps Tesla, would be my guess,” Musk told investors during an earnings call in July 2024.

More recently, in July, Musk told investors that Tesla was entering a “weird transition period where we will lose a lot of incentives in the US.”

“Does that mean like we could have a few rough quarters? Yeah, we probably could have a few rough quarters,” Musk said in an earnings call.

Ford CEO Jim Farley, on the other hand, said that the US EV sales could drop by half once federal EV incentives expire.

“I think it’s going to be a vibrant industry, but it’s going to be smaller, way smaller than we thought,” Farley said during a conference Ford had organized in Detroit on Tuesday.

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