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ev...ev...

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 will unveil the government’s electric vehicle strategy later on Tuesday, which will aim to put 1.7 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2030.

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

 

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.

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

Mr Jafari said subsidies or tax incentives were not included as part of 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.

“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,” Mr Morrison said.

“We will not be forcing Australians out of the car they want to drive or penalising those who can least afford it through bans or taxes.

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.”

-with AAP

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/auto/2021/11/09/electric-vehicles-future-fuels/

 

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still behind the eighth ball...

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.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-09/why-australia-wont-sign-on-to-cop26-petrol-car-ban/100605052

 

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weekend porky pusher...

Morrison’s rhetorical backflip on EVs is gobsmacking, even for him   

The 2022 election season has unofficially begun – on the day that a 2021 election became impossible – with the government announcing its electric vehicle policy, and Labor re-announcing its high-speed rail plan. The Coalition’s “Future Fuels and Vehicles Strategy” has been widely derided as a “fizzer”, not least because the policy – to fund 50,000 charging stations, with the goal that 30 per cent of new car sales be EVs by 2030 – does not include subsidies, tax incentives, sales targets or minimum emission standards; anything, in short, that would make EVs more affordable. But it’s the breathtaking backflip that has made Scott Morrison’s announcement truly worthy of derision. As many in the Opposition and media were quick to point out, the PM famously warned in 2019 that Labor’s EV policy would “end the weekend”, incorrectly claiming that the vehicles could not “tow your trailer” and questioning how people in apartments would be able to charge them, along with a ridiculous scare campaign centred on utes. Appearing on RN Breakfast this morning, shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers labelled the U-turn embarrassing. “How humiliating for a prime minister who said electric vehicles would end the weekend,” he said. “[He’s] now trying to pretend, all of a sudden, because we’re on the eve of an election, that he cares about electric vehicles.” So how exactly does Morrison intend to pull off this brazen backflip, from claiming EVs would ruin the Australian way of life to spruiking his own highly insufficient EV plan? The answer is with a shamelessness that outstrips many of his earlier instances of barefaced lying.

 

Announcing his latest climate “plan” at the Toyota hydrogen production centre in Melbourne – rightly infuriating local Labor MP Tim Watts – Morrison repeated his new favourite slogans: “technology not taxes” and “choices not mandates”. “Our plans are all about supporting those choices, facilitating those choices,” he said proudly, insisting his government’s policy would not be forcing people into electric cars – something Labor’s policy, it almost goes without saying, simply would not have done. But when asked about his earlier suggestions that EVs would “end the weekend”, and whether he stood by them, Morrison simply lied, with a brashness that left many gobsmacked. “I don’t have a problem with electric vehicles,” Morrison said, claiming his issue was only “with governments telling people what to do, and what vehicles they should drive, and where they should drive them”, as he alleged former Labor leader Bill Shorten had wanted to do.

 

Even when a reporter argued that Morrison couldn’t honestly say he hadn’t attacked EVs back in 2019, Morrison claimed he could, “because that’s true” (“black is white,” he might as well have said). Not even his own words being quoted back at him (about extension cords out apartment windows) could stop him. Morrison insisted his change in position was justified because there had been a “massive change in the technology” over the past few years (there has not), before embarking on a rant about the “game-changer” that is hydrogen, and circling back to Labor, insisting the Opposition had been going to “force you to go and move to a vehicle where technology had not arrived where we are at now, and where it will go in the future”. Because apparently technological development wasn’t always an inevitability, but it is now.

 

Today’s falsehoods from Morrison share a likeness with those of former US president Donald Trump, especially in the manner in which the PM attempted to twist his way out of earlier comments – footage of which is insultingly easy to find. They come with the added insult of Morrison wilfully misrepresenting the Opposition’s policy as a “mandate” (it was a target, with incentives to boost uptake, which experts and the Electric Vehicles Council say is what’s needed), while suggesting it is Labor that is fibbing. “That is just a Labor lie,” he said, speaking of comments he made on the public record.

 

Morrison’s clearly false comments have put many journalists, with their reticence to use the word “liar”, in a difficult spot. (Although to its credit, the short title of the Australian Financial Review’s liveblog was actually “PM lies” for a time today.) We can no doubt expect more of these gobsmacking moments in the election campaign ahead, as the PM continues his shameless pivot. Morrison may not even realise he is doing it, as former Monthly Today columnist Sean Kelly observes in his new book, The Game. In an apt quote floating around Twitter, Kelly writes: “He never feels, in himself, insincere or untruthful, because he always means exactly what he says; it is just that he means it only in the moment he is saying it.” Unfortunately for Morrison, his insincerity on climate is becoming more and more apparent to everyone else.

 

Read more:

https://www.themonthly.com.au/today/rachel-withers/2021/09/2021/1636433248/end-ending-weekend

 

See toon at top.

 

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