Nearly 12,000 Californians have bought or leased their first electric car with the state’s MyFirstEV rebate since it opened in August, Governor Gavin Newsom said on Friday. The program takes $3,500 off a new zero-emission vehicle priced up to $50,000, or $1,750 off a used one sold for up to $25,000, at the point of sale. It is the state’s answer to the federal $7,500 credit that ended on September 30, 2025.

The state put $135.5 million into the program and participating automakers match every dollar. At the state’s $1,750 share of a new-car rebate, 12,000 rebates come to no more than $21 million of that money. Tesla, one of the first three brands in the program, told its customers that its allocation was gone after five days of orders.

Tesla’s Rebate Money Ran Out After Five Days of Orders

Tesla’s incentives page says California first-time buyers qualified for the $3,500 only on Model 3 and Model Y inventory orders placed from August 3 to August 7, 2026. They also had to take delivery while funds lasted. Under that, Tesla added one line saying the incentive is no longer available.

Tesla’s reason is that its allocated funds have been depleted. The California Air Resources Board opened the program on August 7 with Hyundai, Lucid and Tesla, its launch release says, with Ford, Rivian, Chevrolet and Kia due later that month and Toyota, Lexus, Honda and Subaru in September. CARB said funding is first come, first served until it runs out, and that a car ordered before its maker joined the program does not qualify. Tesla’s page puts its own start four days before CARB’s announcement.

Newsom’s October 16 release lists twelve brands where rebates are still available: Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Lexus, Toyota, Lucid, Nissan, Rivian, Subaru and Volvo. Tesla is not on it. Neither CARB’s program page nor Tesla’s incentives page says how much of the $135.5 million Tesla was allocated, or how many of the 12,000 rebates went on a Tesla.

Toyota has since added its own money. Its MyNextEV and MyLexusEV offers give Californians who have owned an EV before $2,500 off an eligible Toyota or Lexus EV, bought or leased, with no state funds involved. Carscoops reported in September that the Lexus version carries no price cap and no first-time rule.

SB 168 Exempts Rivian and Lucid From the $50,000 Price Cap

The rebate’s $50,000 cap on new cars and $25,000 cap on used ones does not apply to a “California-headquartered zero-emission vehicle company,” a business run from California as of January 1, 2026 that builds only zero-emission vehicles. That is the text of Senate Bill 168, signed July 13.

Rivian is run from Irvine and Lucid from Newark, and both build nothing but EVs. Tesla moved its headquarters to Austin in 2021. So a $57,990 Rivian R2 Launch Edition qualifies for the $3,500 and a Model Y above $50,000 does not. The bill also caps eligible vehicles at 8,500 pounds of curb weight, includes a clause that keeps the rest of the program in force if a court strikes the headquarters exemption, and makes the program inoperative on September 1, 2031.

USA Today reported the new-car rebate as $3,750 on Monday. The state’s figure, in the law, on CARB’s page and in Newsom’s release, is $3,500: $1,750 from the state and $1,750 from the automaker.

California’s EV Share Held at 19.1% as Gas Stayed Above $4

Californians bought 80,392 zero-emission vehicles in the third quarter, 19.1% of new car sales, the same share as the second quarter, according to the California Energy Commission. Battery-electric cars alone took 16.3% of the state’s market. Nationally, Cox Automotive counted 262,649 EVs sold in the quarter, 6.4% of sales.

Tesla sold more than half of those, Cox says, almost all of them Model Ys and Model 3s. A year earlier, in the federal credit’s last quarter, ZEVs took 29.1% of California’s market, a record the state has not come close to since. The national figure in Q3 was up 6.1% from the second quarter but 39.5% below that same pre-deadline rush, per Cox’s October 12 report. Regular gas averaged $4.30 a gallon nationally on Monday, according to AAA, against $3.04 a year ago. “With gas prices well above $4 a gallon, electric vehicles look better than ever,” said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, Cox’s director of industry insights.

Mike Murphy, chief executive of the American EV Jobs Alliance, told USA Today his group will push other states to copy the California model, with automakers sharing the cost. Newsom first promised a state rebate in November 2024, if Trump killed the federal credit, and his administration put the plan on paper in August 2025.

EVXL’s Take

California got the mechanism right. Taking the money off at the point of sale, with the automaker paying half, is what a buyer responds to, and 12,000 first-time EV owners in ten weeks prove it. The allocation rules are another matter. The program hands each brand its own pot, so the company that sold more than half of America’s EVs last quarter was out of rebate money on the day CARB announced the launch, while most of the $135.5 million is still unspent in October. The headquarters carve-out puts state money on a $57,990 Rivian or a Lucid Air that starts above $70,000 and denies it on a $63,630 Model Y L. That is industrial policy for two companies dressed up as an affordability program. I don’t buy that a first-time buyer in Fresno cares where an automaker’s executives sit. If Sacramento wants the next 12,000, it should move the unspent money to the brands that ran dry and drop the carve-out before a court does it for them.

Sources: Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, California Air Resources Board, Tesla, California Legislative Information, SB 168, California Energy Commission, Cox Automotive, USA Today

EVXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.