Australian governments need to put its money where its mouth is on electric cars.
That’s the underlying message from the car industry, with Mazda calling for the Federal Government to incentives electric vehicles if it wants to achieve its goal of having half of all new car sales be battery-powered by 2035.
Speaking at the reveal of its second electric model, the all-new 6e sedan, Mazda Australia Managing Director, Vinesh Bhindi, said he was expecting some form of action from the government in order to reach its publicly-stated target. Crucially, though, he made it clear there has been no formal or informal commitment between the government and the industry yet.
“Well, I’m expecting, but I’m sure there’ll be many more conversations from the lobbying group,” Bhindi said, referencing the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries. “Because it doesn’t just happen, you have to have inputs to make this significant change.”
Currently electric vehicles make up less than 10 per cent of total vehicle sales, despite the government introducing the New Vehicle Efficiency Standards (NVES) to try and encourage more fuel efficient cars that produce less emissions.
Bhindi was blunt in his assessment of the current situation, saying that without the government stepping in there is a real risk that new car customers will face either restricted choices or higher prices.
“ So the way I look at it, there’s two paths to comply with NVES. One path is you get to those numbers and the only way you’re gonna do that is restrict choice for consumers. The second path is to pay the fine,” he said.
“Both paths, you’re compliant, right? But that’s not the game. The game is to reduce CO2. And restricting choice for a consumer is not good for anybody. So our path is to give customers the choice and make the customer choose which path they want to go.
“And if that means it’s not 50 per cent, it’s 20 per cent, and the byproduct of that is there’s a cost to a business. And if it’s on an ongoing basis and it’s significant, then it comes into pricing. And everybody’s complying or the government will go down a different path.
“So what I’m expecting and probably thinking is that the government at some point, if they’re serious about this, they will have to pull certain levers. And levers could be, provide the infrastructure, provide the guarantee of energy supply, but at a reasonable price. But also maybe look at tax incentives or, they’ve done FBT [fringe benefit tax] and it drove a lot of business with plug-in hybrid, but as soon as it’s pulled off, it stopped. But for BEV [battery electric vehicles], it’s still there. So there are a lot of levers the government could consider and their will in their time. That’s not our part.”
What do you think the government should do: Support electric cars more or leave it to the industry to work out on its own?
Discussion about this post