Australia’s Labor government is expected to announce details of its electric vehicle and fuel efficiency policy at some point this week, according to reports.
A report from the Guardian says that climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, will introduce the Australian-first policy that lays out a road map toward a battery-electric vehicle fleet and increasingly stringent fuel efficiency standards in the process of transitioning.
As it stands, Australia is the last developed nation in the world to cement fuel efficiency standards into binding policy, with Bowen hoping that the policy will help “Australia catch up with the rest of the world”.
Details at this point are scarce, however, a spokesperson for minister Bowen had said that its plan would “provide a nationally consistent, comprehensive framework to looking at supply, demand and infrastructure needs for cleaner and cheaper vehicles”.
Bowen said last week that, at least part of Australia’s inaction on fuel efficiency standards and an EV road map was due to the fact that “the previous government talked down to electric vehicles” in reference to Scott Morrison’s coalition government.
He continued to explain that “that is partly a supply issue because we don’t require low emissions vehicles to be sent to Australia because we don’t have fuel efficiency standards”.
Australia’s Electric Vehicle Council has said, in reference to the potential of fuel efficiency standards being implemented, that Australia risks becoming “the world’s dumping ground for dated, high-emission vehicles if the Albanese government does not move swiftly to catch up with new fuel efficiency standards”.
CEO of the EV Council, Behyad Jafari, has said that upon implementing fuel efficiency standards: “Car companies will now be racing to meet more stringent set in the US, Europe, China, and even New Zealand.”
Late last year, Australia’s peak automotive body, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI), welcomed news that policymakers would scrap the import tariff for a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) or battery-electric vehicle priced under the Luxury Car Tax threshold of $84,916.
At that time, the FCAI’s chief, Tony Weber, said that it was “an important step” that complements the government’s plan to develop an electric vehicle strategy, which we’re set to see unveiled at some point this coming week.
