13 Automakers Just Bet on California. That's a Jobs Story.
When Washington walked away from the EV consumer credit, the conventional wisdom was that automakers would pull back. Thirteen of them just did the opposite.
Thirteen automakers agreed today to put their own money on the table behind California’s MyFirstEV program. The state committed $135 million. Each participating automaker matches its share dollar-for-dollar, bringing the total to more than $270 million for first-time EV buyers.
Our CEO Mike Murphy put it plainly: “This legislation will fund a $3,500 cash-on-the-hood credit for tens of thousands of first-time EV buyers in the Golden State.”
Read past the consumer headline, though. The real news is who signed up.
A voluntary match is a market signal
Nobody made these companies participate. Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Lucid, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Rivian, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, and Volvo each looked at California’s market and decided it was worth their own capital to defend.
Automakers do not spend money to move metal in markets they are planning to exit. They spend it in markets they intend to keep. Every one of those 13 signatures is a company telling its own board that American EV demand is real enough to invest against.
What was actually at stake
When Congress repealed the federal EV consumer credit, the risk was never that Americans would stop wanting EVs. The risk was a demand air pocket. Order books soften, production forecasts get revised, plant investments get “reevaluated,” and supplier contracts get renegotiated. That sequence is how manufacturing jobs disappear, and it moves faster than any policy response.
California just filled that air pocket in its own market, and it did so with a design that got automakers to pay for half of it.
The design is the story
The match requirement is the part other states should study. A conventional incentive spends $135 million and delivers $135 million in savings. This one spends $135 million and delivers $270 million, because it gave automakers a reason to compete for the same buyer the state was trying to reach.
Point-of-sale delivery matters just as much. The discount hits at the dealership, not at tax time, which means it moves buyers who cannot float $3,500 for a year. Those are exactly the buyers a manufacturer needs to reach to keep an assembly line running at volume.
What comes next
California is the proof of concept. It is not the ceiling.
Every state legislature that convenes in 2027 will face the same question California just answered: does the state let federal retreat set the pace of its own auto economy, or does it act? The answer California produced is replicable, it is cheaper than it looks because half the money is private, and it now has 13 automakers on record as willing partners.
We are already working with legislators in several states on exactly this model. If you want the design brief, get in touch.