The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released a report on the effects of tax credits on the purchase of electric vehicles (EVs), concluding that the program would not make the vehicles cost-effective in the short term and that the program’s estimated $2 billion cost was not justified. We beg to differ.  First, if we assume that half of the vehicles are EVs and half are plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and the vehicles receiving the credit replace cars achieving 30 miles per gallon at $100 per barrel of oil, the cars will eliminate the need to purchase about $3.1 billion of oil over their 150,000 mile lifetimes.  While we recognize that the costs of the tax credits are borne by the government and the direct financial benefits of reduced oil consumption accrue to the vehicle owner, there is a net positive return on the investment.  This is, for sure, a very rough back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it at least offers some basis for evaluating the cost of the program.  Moreover, the nation does obtain other important benefits from the deployment of advanced technology that will, over time, reduce our dependence on oil that are not accounted for in CBO’s analysis. Second, CBO’s analysis assumed that maintenance costs for EVs will be the same as traditional cars due to the absence of evidence otherwise.  It is widely understood that EVs will have lower maintenance costs dues to the fact that they have fewer moving parts and simply do not need some of the maintenance needed by traditional cars.  They have no oil to change, no radiator fluid to change, no timing belts to replace and their brakes wear longer due to regenerative braking systems. A recent survey of plug-in vehicle users conducted by Dow Kokam, a joint venture between Dow Chemical and Townsend Kokam Advanced Battery (a company with more than 10 years of experience in producing large format lithium ion cells), recently concluded that maintenance costs for EVs are between 58 and 74 lower than gasoline vehicle depending on the class of vehicle.   Ignoring the reduced maintenance cost and inconvenience is a substantial oversight in CBO’s report. Finally, lowering the cost of the vehicles is a necessary but insufficient condition to facilitate the adoption of EVs.  Tax credits need to be accompanied by a well-coordinated community-wide approach to support the adoption of vehicles adopting new technology and a new fueling infrastructure.  That is why we have long supported government programs to support the deployment of EVs beyond financial incentives for consumers, and continue to do so. EVs have the potential to transform the way that our nation uses oil.  But competing against an entrenched incumbent is difficult, particularly when users of that technology do not bear all of its societal costs.  Analyses that fail to take a full accounting of the costs and benefits of advanced technologies raise the risk of coming up short, which is exactly what CBO did in its report.