PUSH FOR ALL NEW CARS TO BE ELECTRIC BY 2035

25/10/21; The Australian

An electric vehicle charging station. Picture: Heidi Petith

All new cars sold would be electric by 2035, under an ambitious new proposal from the Grattan Institute to slash carbon emissions.

Grattan’s car plan would see the average annual emissions for new passenger vehicle sales capped at 143 grams of carbon per kilometre (g/km), starting from 2024.

Under the proposal, this average annual emissions “ceiling” on new car sales would be lowered to 100g/km by 2027, and then to 25g/km by 2030. Carbon emissions from new vehicles under the ceiling should fall to zero by 2035, the report said.

Passenger vehicles are responsible for 11 per cent of Australia’s carbon emissions, and Marion Terrill, the director of Grattan’s transport and cities program and author of the report, said the plan would achieve 40 per cent of the nation’s emissions reduction task between now and 2030.

Ms Terrill told The Australian the key benefit of the scheme was that it would be up to car companies to decide how they chose to meet the average emissions ceiling.

Ford and Toyota, for example, could still sell their best-selling Ranger and HiLux utes, but would need to offset that by improving the emissions performance across their range of petrol and diesel engines models, or by upping the number of battery and hybrid vehicles.

Car companies which sold larger cars on average would also be given some leeway to not disadvantage them to other manufacturers who sold lighter cars.

The Grattan plan did not include specific EV sales targets, or include any ban on combustion engines. Petrol heads would still be able to buy their V8s come 2035, but it would come at a cost as the manufacturers would likely pass on the penalty they pay for breaching the emissions cap on to the consumer.

Ms Terrill said the cost to taxpayers from the scheme would be virtually zero.

The 2024 start date was chosen to coincide with the Morrison government’s commitment to increase the quality of petrol – which has inhibited the sale of cleaner engines in Australia.

The government is poised to release its Future Fuels electric vehicle strategy, but has already flagged it is opposed to subsidies for EV purchases, and is wary of emissions targets which it believes would make cars more expensive.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor in a statement said “we’ll continue to invest in fleets and infrastructure to support those Australians who want to drive an EV”.

“What we won’t do is force Australian motorists out of the car they want to drive through bans, taxation or restricting choice through imports,” Mr Taylor said.

There were 8688 electric vehicle sales over the first half of 2021 – already up from last year’s 6900 sales – mostly battery EVs, but also hybrid models.

But Australians are not buying electric vehicles anywhere near the numbers of other developed countries.

For example, EVs accounted for only 1.6 per cent of total new car sales over the six months to June. In contrast, more than 10 per cent of passenger vehicles sales in the UK in 2020 were electric, according to the Electric Vehicle Council.

The higher price of EVs remains an important psychological and financial impediment in Australia, as does the limited range of electric car batteries, compounded by the lack of a wide network of fast recharging stations.

Under the Grattan plan, the National Construction Code should be updated to require that new dwellings with off-street parking be ready for electric vehicles from 2022. Government funding for new charging stations should be limited to “publicly accessible chargers that encourage substantial numbers of people to switch to electric vehicles”.

Two in three households who live in a house own more than one car, which means many families could choose to replace one car with an EV, while maintaining their other petrol vehicle as the national network of recharging stations expands over coming years, Ms Terrill said.

The lower running costs of EVs meant the additional price paid was recouped within five years on average.

To further alleviate the higher prices of EVs and lower emitting cars, Ms Terrill said the government should update the Road Vehicle Safety Act to permit the import of any new and second-hand vehicle that met safety and environmental standards, including the annual average emissions ceiling, to produce a thriving used market.

Last week the NSW parliament passed a $490m package of measures aimed at promoting the uptake of EVs, including $3000 rebates and a plan to install ultra-fast EV chargers across the state.

NSW Energy Minister Matt Kean said the strategy would ensure at least 50 per cent of new cars sales are EVs by 2030.

Ms Terrill welcomed the announcement, but said there was only so much states and territories could do, and that the Commonwealth needed to take the lead.

“Providing rebates is not the best way — you will increase the sales no doubt of EVs, but it’s not doing anything about non EVs and so it doesn’t have a big impact on emissions,” she said. “It’s not giving a signal to the manufacturers of the type of vehicles we want here.”

Ms Terrill also said subsidies for EVs raised equity issues, as the take-up would generally be taken up by relatively wealthy buyers.