in our spotlight on business report tonight electric vehicles still appear to be in high demand but experts say growth in the industry has collapsed the assessment comes as New Jersey tries to meet its self-made requirement to get 330,000 EVs registered by the end of this year but it's woefully behind it's all as both the state and federal governments have cut incentives for getting more people on board so where does the industry go from here raven Santana reports 220,000 EVs on the road today they have a goal of of hitting over 300,000 uh in the next year that would require about a 50% jump which sounds like a lot you never really want to say never uh but it is going to be challenging to to hit that goal nick Nigro warns New Jersey's electric vehicle ambitions are still a long way from reality nigro who is founder of Atlas Public Policy a research firm focused on electric vehicles says national trends prove demand for EVs are based on where you live and what vehicle you're currently driving couple of big picture things that are going to matter to really break through for EVs to hit that sort of 25% EV adoption nationwide and and one is affordability uh increasingly the the cost of owning electric vehicle or at least purchasing one is is declining the other thing that people pay a lot of attention to is charging so the presence of public charging their ability to travel and use their EV in the same way that they would be able to use a conventional vehicle is critically important last year we saw about 60,000 more EVs on our roads right that's that's good right but it is not year-over-year growth compared to what happened the year before we need to be doubling right the amount of electric vehicles coming onto our roads in order to make the numbers we need to make pam Frank is CEO of Charge EVC an organization dedicated to accelerating the adoption of electric transportation in New Jersey state rules require New Jersey to have 330,000 zero emissions vehicles registered by the end of the year frank says for that to happen the state needs to create a more robust incentive environment she argues recent moves by state lawmakers to phase out a sales tax exemption for EVs and steeply increase EV registration fees do the opposite on top of that there's a peculiar feature of New Jersey law that requires when you buy or lease a car you have to pay four years of registration upfront four years so that's not a thousand bucks you just put on the cost of an electric vehicle you're looking at a $100 or more increase in the monthly payment rick Dilva is the owner of Liberty family of dealerships which includes the Subaru dealership in Emerson as well as three other locations across New Jersey dilva says demand for EVs can't be forced dilva says of the about 450 Subarus he has available 10 of them are Sulttera EVs like this one here behind me which he says is enough to meet the current demand if you know let's say I there might be a market here i'm just going to throw numbers say 10 a month well I might be getting 50 of them whether I can sell them or not they're coming otherwise the manufacturers for every car that the manufacturers are short of the the number that they need to send there's a a penalty for the manufacturer of $22,000 per unit that they don't send you know I'm unfortunately not as optimistic as I would like to be uh and you know the biggest challenge we found is ultimately you can mandate you know any deadline for electric vehicles that the government might want but it's up to the consumer to have to go out and purchase it you can't mandate um a purchase of a vehicle president of the New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers Laura Parata says the state cutting back on incentives combined with a lack of demand could ultimately drive out business along with customers for our small business dealers this is a critical point in time you know there are they're starting to panic i'll be honest the biggest fear I know that the New Jersey dealers have right now is that this is going to drive business out of New Jersey to surrounding states that don't have these current very high EV mandates so for example Pennsylvania's right across the river that any consumer who wants to buy their gas-powered vehicle in 2027 might literally just drive across the bridge and and get a vehicle in Pennsylvania and register it here in New Jersey which you know is terrible for our small business dealers in response to the criticism Governor Murphy's office released a statement in support of their commitment saying "The Murphy administration is firmly committed to reducing emissions and increasing EV uptake and will continue to further our ambitious climate goals by providing incentives and setting sales targets to support growing consumer demand for EVs in our state."

They also highlighted several incentives including Charge Up New Jersey for income eligible applicants to receive $4,000 and Clean Fleet EV program an incentive program for local state and nonprofit entities purchasing new EVs and/or EV charging stations for NJ Spotlight News I'm Raven Santana [Music]