Which EVs qualify for the $10K auto-loan interest deduction?

Why US final assembly is the whole ballgame

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act ended the $7,500 new-EV credit (§30D) and the $4,000 used-EV credit (§25E) on September 30, 2025. What it created in their place is a deduction for interest paid on a qualifying vehicle loan — available for tax years 2025 through 2028, worth up to $10,000 of interest per year. It applies to any fuel type, so it isn't an EV incentive as such, but it's the closest thing EV buyers have left. Our EV tax credit 2026 guide covers all the rules and has an eligibility checker tool.

For an EV shopper, almost every eligibility gate is easy to clear — buy new, finance it with a secured loan, keep your income under the phase-out. The gate that trips people up is final assembly in the United States. This is a stricter test than the tariff rules: a car built in Mexico or Canada gets partial tariff relief under USMCA (see our EV tariffs explainer), but for this deduction, North America isn't good enough — it has to be the United States. That single distinction knocks out some of the most popular "American-brand" EVs on the market, like the Mexico-built Mustang Mach-E and Chevy Equinox EV.

Three facts about a car, and only one is the test

Every table below shows the same three things, because the fastest way to get this wrong is to substitute one for another:

• Final assembly — the country the finished vehicle rolled out of. This is the entire test. Nothing else on this page changes the answer.
• US/Canadian parts content — the percentage the manufacturer files under the American Automobile Labeling Act. Useful context, no bearing on the deduction. AALA figures are filed per carline before the model year starts and rounded to 5%, and several carlines are combined (the Chevrolet Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV share one filing), so treat them as filed estimates.
• Battery cell origin — where the cells come from. No bearing either, and left blank wherever no source pins it down rather than guessed at.

Two vehicles on this page prove it in opposite directions. The Mercedes-Benz EQE SUV is assembled in Vance, Alabama and qualifies — on just 20% US/Canadian parts content, with China as its largest single source. The Dodge Charger Daytona has 42% US/Canadian content, a US-built motor and a US-built transmission, and does not qualify, because it is assembled in Windsor, Ontario. Domestic content is not the test, and US assembly does not mean US parts.

EVs with US final assembly (can qualify) — 23

These 23 EVs you can buy new are final-assembled in the US, so they clear the assembly test. Each row was checked against the NHTSA Part 583 / AALA filings — the federal record manufacturers must file per carline — as of 2026-08-11. Assembly moves, the deduction still depends on the rest of the rules, and the IRS tests your specific VIN: this is a shortlist to verify, not a guarantee. The cheapest of them is the Chevrolet Bolt EV, from $28,995.

Three of these rows carry a trim exception shown inline: the nameplate is US-built but at least one trim is not, and a nameplate-level yes would be the wrong answer for that buyer.

US-assembled, out of production — 4

These pass the assembly test and fail a different one: the deduction is new-vehicle only, and none of them is still being built. A leftover new, unregistered example bought on a qualifying loan can still count — a used one never can, however it is financed. They are listed separately rather than padding the count above, because for almost every shopper they are not buyable.

US-assembled, not delivering yet — 1

US final assembly, but you can't buy one yet — and a reservation is not a purchase, so there is no loan and no interest to deduct. Worth knowing about, not yet worth planning a return around.

No honest model-level answer — 2

A list like this wants to be a yes/no. For these 2 nameplates it can't be. US-market examples came out of more than one country, or the manufacturer's claim and the federal filing disagree — so we are not putting them in either list, and we are not going to tell you to claim a $10,000 deduction the statutory record doesn't support. The row shows exactly what is and isn't established.

For these two, the model is not the unit of analysis — the individual car is. Read the final-assembly-point line on that car's own window sticker (the Monroney label legally has to name the city and state), or run its VIN through the checker below and then confirm on the NHTSA decoder.

Edge cases — check the VIN, not the badge

Some models are genuinely split: the same nameplate can be US-assembled or imported depending on the exact vehicle, the trim, or the model year. For these, the badge tells you nothing — only the VIN does.

• Polestar 3 — the manufacturer and the federal record disagree. Polestar's own newsroom says the Polestar 3 is assembled at Volvo's Ridgeville, South Carolina plant, and Volvo has said global output consolidates there. But the car's only federal parts-content filing — AALA model year 2025 — records final assembly as China, at 1% US/Canadian content, and Polestar filed nothing at all for model year 2026. Chengdu and Ridgeville genuinely ran in parallel. We do not list this as qualifying. Check the specific car's window sticker.
• Volvo — only the EX90. The Volvo EX90 is built in Ridgeville, South Carolina and qualifies; the EX30 and EX40 are built in Ghent, Belgium and do not.
• Genesis Electrified GV70 — check the sticker. Both the 2025 and 2026 AALA filings record final assembly in the United States (Montgomery, Alabama), which is why it isn't on the imported list. It isn't on the qualifying list either: Hyundai's Alabama plant paused Electrified GV70 assembly in mid-2025 and the car has been described as dual-sourced Montgomery and Ulsan for 2026, so an individual car's answer isn't settled by the nameplate. Its Genesis siblings — the GV60 and Electrified G80 — are Korea-built and don't qualify.
• Hyundai Ioniq 5 — but not the Ioniq 5 N. Retail Ioniq 5s come from Hyundai's Georgia Metaplant at 58% US/Canadian content. The Ioniq 5 N is a completely separate, Korea-built AALA carline at 1% — same badge, opposite tax answer, and still on sale at around $59,900. The same pattern applies to the Kia EV6 GT and EV9 GT, both shown at their rows above.
• Cadillac — three qualify, one doesn't. The Lyriq, Vistiq, and Escalade IQ are US-built; the smaller Optiq is built in Mexico and does not qualify, despite sharing its 43% US/Canadian content figure with the Lyriq and Vistiq. Same parts, different plant, different answer.
• Chevrolet — split down the middle. The Silverado EV and new Bolt are US-built; the Equinox EV and Blazer EV are built in Mexico and don't qualify. GM's announced move of Equinox and Blazer production to US plants covers the gasoline versions — the EVs stay in Ramos Arizpe.
• Mercedes-Benz EQ — SUVs yes, sedans no. The EQE SUV and EQS SUV are assembled in Vance (Tuscaloosa), Alabama; the EQE sedan, EQS sedan, and electric CLA are built in Germany. Same nameplate family, opposite answers.
• Nissan Leaf — it flipped. The previous-generation Leaf was US-built in Smyrna, Tennessee and filed at 30% US/Canadian content with US final assembly. The all-new 2026 Leaf files at 0% with final assembly in Japan — Nissan decided not to build the third generation at Smyrna. Same nameplate, opposite answer, and one of the cheapest new EVs in America now misses out.

So check the car in front of you. The first character of its VIN encodes the country of the assembly plant — paste it in below and you'll get the country without leaving this page. It's a screen, not a verdict: confirm the final-assembly line on the window sticker before you file.

Imported EVs that don't qualify — 29

These EVs are on sale new in the US but final-assembled abroad, so the loan-interest deduction is off the table no matter how the loan is structured. Mexico and Canada count as "abroad" for this test — a common and costly point of confusion, and the reason those two countries lead the list.

Imported and out of production — 9

Two reasons these fail, and either one is enough: they weren't assembled in the United States, and they aren't being built. They are here because people still shop for them and still find leftover inventory listed.

Imported and not on sale yet — 2

Announced but not purchasable, and imported when they arrive — so the answer is already no, before the first one reaches a dealer.

That accounts for every one of the 70 nameplates we track, with none double-counted and none left out: 23 US-assembled and on sale, 5 US-assembled but not buyable new, 2 with no honest model-level answer, 29 imported and on sale, and 11 imported and off the market. The page's counts are computed from the dataset at build time, not typed in — if a nameplate we track would land in none of these groups, the build fails rather than quietly dropping it.

How to verify your exact vehicle

Because the IRS tests the individual vehicle, don't rely on a list — check the VIN. There are two IRS-accepted ways to prove US final assembly:

• The VIN's plant of manufacture, and
• The final-assembly point on the vehicle's label (usually on the driver's-side door jamb).

Quick screen from the first character of the VIN: 1, 4, 5, 70, or 7F–7Z means a US plant (the 7-range is why Tesla's Texas-built cars, whose VINs start "7SA," count). 2 is Canada, 3 is Mexico, J is Japan, K is Korea, and W is Germany. That's the screen the VIN checker above runs, in your browser, without sending the VIN anywhere. The authoritative tool is the free NHTSA VIN Decoder, which the IRS's OBBBA guidance points taxpayers to. You must include the VIN on your return when you claim the deduction.

How much is it actually worth?

It's a deduction, not a credit, so it lowers your taxable income rather than your tax bill directly. The value is your marginal tax rate times the interest you paid — a different number for every reader, and a genuinely awkward one to do in your head once the phase-out and the 2028 expiry are in play. So run your own loan through it. The calculator opens on a middle-of-the-road example — $45,000 at 7% over 72 months, first payment in January 2026 — which is the case the paragraphs below describe.

So the first-year benefit on a typical $45k EV loan is roughly $649–$708, not the full $10,000 cap — the cap only bites on very large or very high-rate loans. And because auto-loan interest is front-loaded, the deduction shrinks every year as you pay down the balance (about $2,500 of interest in year two, less after that).

The expiry is the part most people miss. The deduction exists for tax years 2025–2028 only, so a loan taken out in 2026 gets at most three bites at it — and a 72-month loan is still running in 2031. On the example above, $2,772 of the $10,239 in total interest — 27% of it — falls in tax years where there is no deduction left to claim. Stretching the term to lower the payment does not buy you more of this break; it buys you a smaller share of it.

A note on income, and on the order the IRS applies it in: your interest is capped at $10,000 first, and then the phase-out is subtracted — $200 for every $1,000 of MAGI above $100,000 (single) or $200,000 (married filing jointly), rounded up to the next whole $1,000. That is the sequence on Schedule 1-A, Part IV (lines 24 and 29), and it matters: the reduction comes off the interest you actually paid, not off the $10,000 cap. A single filer at $120,000 MAGI loses $4,000 — which is the whole deduction for anyone whose annual interest is under $4,000. "Gone at $150,000" is only true for someone deducting the full $10,000.

Frequently asked questions