As expected, financing for new electric vehicles spiked in the third quarter, before the $7,500 federal tax break for EVs expired Sept. 30.
Less expected is that EV finance share appears to have continued strong into early October, according to Experian Automotive.
“EVs did not fall off in October, so far,” based on early returns for the month, Melinda Zabritski, head of automotive financial insights for Experian Automotive, told WardsAuto in a phone interview. Experian Automotive published its State of the Auto Finance Market for Q3 on Dec. 4.
EV share was widely expected to nosedive since the tax break expired. However, it’s likely that a big, last-minute rush to beat the Sept. 30 deadline created a paperwork backlog and some 11th-hour EV loans and leases appeared as October originations.
Above 10%, for now
Additionally, in August the IRS also announced it would honor the tax incentive offer for deals where customers put money down and signed a “written, binding contract” before Sept. 30, even if delivery took place after. That probably gave the incentive some legs, too.
For the third quarter, EV share of new-purchase finance originations reached 11.4%, up from 10.1% a year earlier, according to the Experian Automotive report. In the phone interview, Zabritski said that early-October share for new EV financing was even higher, above 13%.
Again, that’s not expected to last. After the end of Q3, publicly traded dealer groups reported they were glad to reduce inventories of unprofitable EVS.
Dealer sentiment falls
In a separate Dealer Sentiment Index report for the fourth quarter of 2025, Cox Automotive says dealers on average downgraded their expectations for the EV market in their area three months from now, to an index of 24, on a 100-point scale. That’s down from 39 a year ago.
In the second quarter of 2022, it was an index of 64, indicating almost two-thirds of the respondents had a positive outlook for the EV market.
