10/11/2021

(AU New Daily) Electric Car Groups Savage Coalition’s Future Fuels ‘Fizzer’

New Daily - AAP

Scott Morrison tours Toyota's hydrogen plant in Melbourne, ahead of the electric vehicle announcement. Photo: AAP

Electric vehicle groups have lashed out at the federal government’s long-awaited future fuels policy, labelling the proposal a “fizzer”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison unveiled his government’s electric vehicle strategy at the Toyota plant in Melbourne’s west on Tuesday morning.

It aims to put 1.7 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2030.

“Allowing consumers to lead this process is really important,” he said.

“The customer is always right and the customer wants to buy electric vehicles at a cheaper price and get longer duration from these vehicles.”

The abrupt backflip comes after the Prime Minister derided electric vehicles in the lead-up to the last federal election as “ending the weekend”.

On Tuesday, Mr Morrison said he had opposed Labor’s electric vehicle policy because it wasn’t a good one.

“I don’t think that policy was a good policy. I still don’t think it is a good policy,” he said.

As part of the $500 million Future Fuels strategy, the government anticipates $250 million will be used to build charging stations and commercial fleets.

However, Electric Vehicles Council chief executive Behyad Jafari said the strategy ignored important initiatives to boost uptake.

“There’s no sugar coating it, Future Fuels is a fizzer,” Mr Jaafari said.

“If it contained fuel efficiency standards and rebates, it would give Australians more choice.”

Mr Morrison also expects $250 million in Future Fuels funding will be matched by private investment, with as many as 2600 jobs to be created.

“We want the customers to be able to drive the incentive for these vehicle companies to drive their costs down. We don’t want to drive those costs down by writing off the checks to multinational companies. That is not the way you do this,” he said.

As part of the government strategy, 50,000 households and 400 businesses would have access to charging stations, with 1000 public stations being built.

But Mr Jafari said there were no subsidies or tax incentives included in the the government’s strategy to boost electric vehicle uptake, while fuel efficiency measures were needed to allow more choice for customers.

“[The policy] addresses 5 per cent of what’s needed, and the 5 per cent of what it does is good,” he told ABC radio.

“It’s now 2021 and we have been waiting two years for this policy … it’s far too little, too late.”

Some 84 per cent of the population will have access to a charging station, under the government’s plan.

Labor has accused the government of copying the policies it took to the last election, which was attacked by the Coalition in the lead up to the poll.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery in politics,” former opposition leader Bill Shorten told morning TV on Tuesday.

“Mr Morrison must read my policy book at night-time for ideas.”

Labor leader Anthony Albanese said Australia was falling behind globally on electric vehicle uptake.

“What we would do is eliminate the taxes, but also to make sure that companies could take up electric vehicles,” he told the ABC.

“[This is] a government that had a violent opposition to electric vehicles and now we would have it believe that have converted.”

In a separate environmental announcement, Labor is promising to spend $200 million fixing up urban waterways if it wins power in the next poll to be held by May 2022.

The program, which involves local governments and community groups, is aimed at improving water quality, reducing localised flooding and restoring habitats.

“Urban waterways are so important for quality of life,” Mr Albanese said.

“More people who live in cities and higher density housing need parks around our waterways right around our cities to engage in recreational activity.”

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(AU The Guardian) Coalition Releases Electric Vehicle Strategy But Rules Out Subsidies

The Guardian - 

Scott Morrison, who in 2019 suggested EVs would ‘end the weekend’, says he now expects them to make up only 30% of new sales by 2030

The Coalition’s $178m policy will extend funding for hydrogen and EV charging stations, but falls short of mandating targets for uptake or providing subsidies. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

The Morrison government has ruled out subsidising the expansion of electric and hybrid vehicles, and expects only 30% of new sales to be EVs by 2030 – a date by which some countries plan to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars.

The government’s “future fuels and vehicles strategy” instead includes $178m of new funding, mostly for new EV and hydrogen refuelling infrastructure and to help businesses set up charging stations for fleets.

Scott Morrison – who in 2019 said Labor’s EV policy would “end the weekend” – emphasised the government would not “be forcing Australians out of the car they want to drive or penalising those who can least afford it through bans or taxes”.

“Australians love their family sedan, farmers rely on their trusted ute and our economy counts on trucks and trains to deliver goods from coast to coast,” he said in a statement released to some media on Monday and obtained independently by Guardian Australia.



“Just as Australians have taken their own decision to embrace roof-top solar at the highest rate in the world, when new vehicle technologies are cost-competitive, Australians will embrace them too.”

The expansion of rooftop solar – which, according to the Clean Energy Council, has now led to 3m systems being installed across the country – was encouraged for more than a decade through federal and state incentives and subsidies.

The government expects its approach to EVs will have only a limited impact as a climate policy, projecting it will cut greenhouse gas emissions by just 8m tonnes – less than 2% of the national annual total – by 2035.

Transport emissions are nearly 20% of the national total and were increasing rapidly before Covid-19 lockdowns. They are projected to rebound in the years ahead.

The energy and emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, said the government would work with the states to ensure the electricity grid was ready for an increase in EVs.

The government’s strategy of helping install charging infrastructure – including “co-investing with industry to roll-out an estimated 50,000 new smart chargers in Australian households” – was about “helping motorists embrace the increasing range of technologies available to keep them moving in an informed and fair way”, he said.

He claimed credit for the number of low emissions vehicle models available in Australia increasing by 20% over the past eight months, but did not explain how the government’s policy had contributed to this.

Car manufacturers across the globe have released a wave of new EV models as governments have announced emissions limits for passenger cars and future bans on fossil fuel cars. Industry representatives say Australians have fewer options than comparable countries due to a lack of policy support.

Taylor said voluntary adoption of EVs was “the right pathway for reducing transport emissions over the long term”.

“Stringent standards, bans or regressive taxes will limit choice and increase the upfront costs of cars for Australians,” he said.

The chief executive of the Electric Vehicle Council, Behyad Jafari, said the government’s strategy addressed only “roughly 5% of the electric vehicle issue”. He said it ruled out the two “most important and efficient measures” to encourage EV uptake – fuel efficiency standards that would require cars to become cleaner over time, and rebates.

He said EVs were a “monumental opportunity” for Australia that could cut emissions while “creating an innovative industry in manufacturing, technology and services”.

“It’s disappointing that, against the overwhelming advice of the industry and experts, the government continues to peddle its false line that doing nothing increases choice,” Jafari said. “For a strategy that has taken years to write, this leaves much to be desired.”

A study has suggested future uptake of EVs will be driven by state policies.

ClimateWorks Australia, a thinktank connected to Monash University, found promised state and territory action had set a de facto national target for 2030 of at least 30% of new cars being electric.

The two biggest states, New South Wales and Victoria, are aiming for EVs to make up 50% of new sales by the end of the decade.



Taylor said “many Australians” were choosing new technology vehicles, citing Electric Vehicle Council data that 8,688 battery and plug-in hybrid vehicles were sold in the first half of 2021, an increase on last year.

EVs were just 0.75% of new car sales in Australia last year, compared with 10.2% in Europe and 15% in the UK. They are nearly 80% of new sales in Norway.

Norway and South Korea have announced a ban on new petrol and diesel car sales from 2025, followed by a list of countries – including the UK, Germany, India and Israel – in 2030. Japan and California will phase out new fossil fuel vehicle sales in 2035, and China, Canada, Singapore and Sri Lanka in 2040.

The Morrison government announced plans for a national EV strategy before the last federal election, but changed direction after accusing Labor of wanting to “end the weekend” by setting a target of 50% of new sales being EVs by 2030.

It has rejected introducing fuel efficiency standards, which would involve setting a target to lower the average emissions from the national vehicle fleet, despite a departmental analysis in December 2016 finding the benefits in savings on fuel and reduced emissions would outweigh the costs under all scenarios examined.

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(AU ABC) Several Nations Are Promising To Ban Petrol Car Sales By 2035, But Australia Isn't One Of Them

ABC News - Jake Evans

Several countries and car manufacturers have plans to go all electric by the end of the decade. (AP: Jon Super)

The electric vehicle conversation has been recharged by the government's announcement it will invest $250 million in car charging infrastructure in Australia.

But the government's "future fuels strategy" has arrived with missing pieces, in particular a target for electric vehicle sales that has been long sought after by the industry.

At the COP26 international climate summit in Glasgow tomorrow, the United Kingdom and several other nations will pledge to ban the sale of petrol cars in developed countries by 2035 and in developing nations by 2040.

And there are more than 20 nations that have already announced plans to phase out petrol cars even sooner.

Car manufacturers themselves are turning their fleets electric, with Volvo, Ford in Europe and even Rolls Royce committed to selling all-electric vehicles by 2030, and many other makers, including General Motors and Volkswagen, soon after.

The race is on to get off the gas.

But Australia is just leaving the starting line.

Leading car markets are already selling mostly electric

Just 0.8 per cent of new light vehicles sold in Australia so far this year have been electric, according to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries.

What stops Australian drivers
buying electric cars

And while that is double the number sold last year, it is behind the global trend of 4 per cent of new cars sold being EVs, and even further behind trends in Europe and the UK, where one in 10 cars being bought are electric.

In Norway, the world leader, three-quarters of new cars sold last year were electric.

And EV sales have continued to grow and outpace petrol car sales. Even through the pandemic, electric car sales have grown as petrol car sales have fallen.

Many of the nations planning to sign the pledge to ban petrol cars also have more developed charging infrastructure.

According to The Blueprint Institute, as of last year Australia had fewer than 100 public charging stations per million people, compared to more than 400 chargers per million people in Europe.

Australia needs more car charging infrastructure to be able to support a growing EV market. (AP: Ng Han Guan)

Even the United States, which is similarly behind on EV adoption and does not intend to sign on to the 2035 petrol car ban, has roughly twice as many chargers for its population as Australia does.

Why won't Australia sign on?

Getting petrol vehicles off Australian car lots by 2035 would require a serious increase in Australia's ambitions.

The government has pointedly refused to set a policy that could appear to force Australians to adopt zero emissions cars, instead saying people should be able to buy what they want.

"We're not going to tell them what to buy, we're not going to tell them where to drive, we're not going to tell them how to live their lives," Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

"Australians will make their own choices."

Federal Labor has also not committed to introducing a sales target, though its now-dumped 2019 election policy had advocated for half of new cars to be electric by 2030. 

But several states have set goals to go electric. The ACT, which leads the country in electric car sales based on population, has set a goal for all new cars to be zero-emission vehicles by 2030.

More than one in 10 cars on European roads will be electric by 2030, but Australian projections are less ambitious. (Supplied: Infrastructure Victoria)

While the federal government will not follow the states' lead by setting a formal sales target, it did quietly set a forecast in a February discussion paper on its future fuels strategy that it expects one in four cars sold in 2030 to be electric.

Industry groups say on its current policies, Australia is unlikely to see those sorts of figures.

The Electric Vehicle Council has advocated for discounts, tax exemptions, and emissions targets to drive a change in the car market.

The EV Council says without those, Australia's car market will continue to lag behind the rest of the world.

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