Greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles of all types represent almost 20 per cent of Australia’s annual total carbon output. Drastically reducing emissions in the transport sector is critical if Australia is to achieve its new emission reduction target of 43 per cent by 2030.
But if you wanted to buy an electric car in Australia – the most effective way of cutting your personal vehicle emissions – you will need to join the queue and prepare for a long wait. According to Tesla’s website, for example, an order today would allow you to drive the car, at the earliest, in February. It will most likely take longer.
Australia is struggling to attract enough supply of electric cars.Credit:
There is no shortage of demand for electric cars in Australia. Electric vehicle registrations have more than tripled in Victoria over the past four years, with the recent surge in petrol prices adding impetus. But we no longer manufacture cars in this country, so we rely entirely on global carmakers to supply vehicles.
That is why recent reports detailing how the car industry has launched a wide-ranging secret campaign that would further delay Australia’s transition to electric vehicles is so concerning. Confidential documents show a lobbying and public relations strategy, circulated among top motoring executives, that aims to limit any new fuel-efficiency standards to a level that would leave Australia’s car industry with some of the weakest carbon emission rules in the world.
Fuel-efficiency standards regulate the average carbon dioxide emissions of a manufacturer’s fleet and have been adopted in most countries. Australia, Turkey, Indonesia and Russia are the only G20 countries with no mandatory standards for fuel efficiency, though Australia has a voluntary code. The current lack of meaningful standards has resulted in the country becoming a “dumping ground” for more polluting vehicles. The chief executive of the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, Tony Weber, said Australia was now at the end of the global queue for many electric vehicles and, in many cases, new stock was being sent to countries that moved quicker on emissions standards and had established markets.
In June, environment ministers from all 27 European Union countries agreed to phase out the sale of combustion engine cars by 2035, while China has said that all new vehicles sold by that year must be powered by “new energy”. Chinese carmaker BYD has tripled production of electric vehicles in one year, enabling it to deliver 641,000 cars in the first six months of this year, making it the largest manufacturer of electric vehicles in the world.
In Australia, Labor under Bill Shorten proposed stricter fuel efficiency standards before the 2019 election, but the policy was dumped after a Coalition scare campaign led by former prime minister Scott Morrison labelled the policy an attack on tradies’ utes and a threat to the weekend. Labor’s new policy focuses on lowering taxes on electric vehicles and putting more money into electric charging stations.
The move raises issues including how to encourage more electric vehicles into the country, how to accelerate the rollout of charging stations, and where to locate the stations on busy city streets. There must also be provision for those living in apartments, and possibly building standards for new apartments requiring infrastructure to be installed as part of the build. While other countries are moving on these things, Australia is not.
Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen has said the government will “consider all viable options to build on the policy announcements we’ve already made and are implementing”. But the clock is ticking. Australia has been a laggard for far too long, but that should not offer any excuse for continuing to stay that way.
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