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Comment by pkaye | Hacker News Reader

Another thing is the pre 2017 car-pool stickers for electric cars are expiring in the bay area. The newer stickers have income caps of $150k (single filing) or $300k (joint filing). I wonder what the impact will be on Tesla? The first change helps them but the second hurts them.

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Did they give any justification for the change? It makes absolutely no sense to me why you'd put an income cap on that - don't you wan to encourage EVERYONE to burn less fossil fuels, REGARDLESS of income?

The OP is incorrect, there is no income cap on carpool stickers.

What the GP posted is a bit misleading, you either get the rebate or the carpool lane stickers if you're over the cap but not both. It does suck but I think it's for the best. The hov lane in norcal is becoming relatively crowded lately since electric cars were a rarity before but not so much now.

They've been crowded at least since the yellow sticker 'Prius' program of, what, 2007?

I wouldn't know. I'm part of the new blood that came to the bay area after that to ruin everything. :)

You got your stories wrong, the new blood is ruining Portland and Seattle, where they hate outsiders (as long as they carefully avoid having a racial component to this complaint).

Why should everyone else pay for the rich to get a tax break and free usage of HOV lanes? They're the ones who can most afford to pay for those things, and the ones most likely to want to buy a vehicle for bragging rights.

"Rich"? I've seen Nissan Leaf leases for as low as $90 a month.

With what kind of down payment and termination fee?

I was not entirely correct but part of the problems is that the car pool lanes are overloaded here and the federal laws have some minimum average speed requirements for those lanes which are not being maintained. So they are kicking out the older clean-air cars. Also they are trying to find ways to give lower income individuals access to clean air vehicles.

You are incorrect. The income cap is just for the CVRP rebate. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/?1dmy&urile=wcm:path:/dmv_...

According the to CARB website [1], the income cap only applies to the state EV rebate, not the carpool stickers.

[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/decal

Wait, what? I was not aware of this. I guess driving in the carpool lane today was not a great idea…

OP is incorrect.

Do you have more information about this change, or lack thereof?

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/09/11/223654-solo-drivers-t...

Green and white decals expired January 1st, 2019. Red decals, which were first issued in 2018, are still valid. Vehicles which were first issued decals in 2017 are eligible to upgrade to red decals. The current decals being issued are purple, but it is unclear if they are only for vehicles being issued decals for the first time or if they can be issued for upgrades requested now.

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/decal

Looks like my understanding was not entirely correct but there is an income cap for the rebate. And clean air vehicles older than 2017 will lose car pool lane access. They change the sticker color to help identify.

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