A key date in the history — and future — of electric vehicles in America is fast approaching.

At midnight Sept. 30 the federal government’s EV tax credits will disappear, effectively shooting the price of new EVs up by as much as $7,500 and of lower-priced used EVs by up to $4,500.

Not surprisingly, that date is a focus of J.D. Power’s E-Vision Intelligence Report for September, an exploration that begins with two eye-opening questions.

What will happen when market forces start dictating EV demand? Is this the end of the road for EVs?

To begin with, according the report, based on data from four J.D. Power EV studies conducted in 2025, said the answer to the second question is a resounding no.

While the report noted pundits having “a field day forecasting the demise of the EV segment,” the data showed the upcoming end of the tax credit hasn’t stopped car shoppers from thinking about buying electric.

In fact, the majority of consumers planning to buy or lease a new vehicle in the next 12 months (58.5%) said they are probably going to consider an EV, with 23.6% saying they’re “very likely” and 34.9% calling themselves “somewhat likely.”

Brent Gruber, the executive director of J.D. Power’s EV practice and author of the report, noted all of those numbers “have been largely unchanged for the past 12 months, suggesting consistent consumer interest despite widely publicized market changes.”

Still, interest isn’t sales, and Gruber acknowledged price is going to be a factor. The data showed 45% of the shoppers who said they are not likely to consider an EV cited the price as a major reason, up three percentage points from July.

Currently, EV sales have been surging in advance of the credit’s expiration date, the report said, as consumers are taking advantage of what Gruber called “a once-in-a-lifetime buying opportunity for EVs.”

With manufacturers doubling down on electric with new models, inventory plentiful and the tax incentive still in effect, EVs accounted for 11.2% of new vehicles sales in August, up 1.7 points year-over-year, well above the 2025 full-year market projection of 9.1% and tied for the highest EV market share ever recorded for a month.

But that surge is clearly tied to the tax credit — the EV market share through May was “hovering in the 8% range,” the report said. As to what exactly happens in a post-tax credit environment… well, that’s the great unknown.

There are clues, however, and they come from north of the border and overseas. Canada, Germany, France and the U.K. have all phased out EV incentives over the past two years, with varying results.

In those instances, EV sales dropped off sharply once the incentives were gone, only to rebound. In Germany, for example, market share was as high as 22% before the program was eliminated in December 2023, and sank to 9.9% three months later. But by July 2025 it had risen back to 16.8%. Similarly, the U.K.’s EV share dropped to 9.9% a month after its incentive expired in June 2022, but is now almost 20%.

“When we look to current trends in consumer sentiment and track how the removal of similar EV tax credits has affected EV sales in other parts of the world,” Gruber said in the report, “we see a fairly predictable trend in supply-demand dynamics taking root in the U.S. market.”