Wow! A federal political party discusses EV policy

Post by **jonescg** » Thu, 19 May 2016, 04:17

So for the first time in recent history, a federal polical party has made an announcement in the leadup to an election about electric vehicle policy.

The Greens announced a series of policies which are aimed at increasing the uptake of EVs in Australia. Basic gist of it is this:

The Greens will help to get 31,000 more electric vehicles on the
road by 2021 and 330 more charging stations around the
country by:

 Funding free registration for the first five years after purchase of a fully electric vehicle
 Providing $151 million in grants to support local governments, state governments and car park operators to install electric vehicle charging infrastructure
 Providing $50 million in grants to support government and non-government organisations to meet the gap between the cost on electric vehicle and a conventional vehicle
 Increasing the luxury car tax to 50% for conventional fossil fuel vehicles over $100,000 to drive consumer choices towards electric vehicles
 Including firms involved in electric vehicle manufacturing in the government’s Automotive Transformation Scheme to grow the jobs and skills in the new electric vehicle industry.

http://greens.org.au/ev-revolution

Now, this thread is about pulling their policy to pieces and reading the details, but I think we can be pleased that any party is actually discussing EVs. Hopefully the Liberals and the ALP will release their ideas in due course...

Post by **tassie_tiger** » Thu, 19 May 2016, 04:28

Wasn't that long ago someone was mentioning that the state government in Tassie was going to purchase 12 or 19 ev's... seems that never eventuated.

Post by **jonescg** » Thu, 19 May 2016, 04:53

I think the Greens policy targeting the luxury car tax is misguided. Why increase taxes on luxury ICE cars when there's a hundred cheap ICE cars doing as much damage? Surely they could just exempt the LCT on any EV?

Also the free rego for 5 years is too generous, and really, that's a state jurisdiction. Perhaps they could fund the state governments to the tune of a 30% discount on rego. Other taxes fees and charges still apply - it's a car after all.

I like the assistance package idea for fleet purchases - that's probably the best way to increase the pool of EVs into the second hand market, and drive good pries for those who fleet buy.

Charging infrastructure spending is welcome, and the grant-based selection process is a good way to ensure that communities who want one, can get one by proving their case. But Tesla is already rolling out 120 kW chargers for those who buy Model S or Model 3's, as the cost is already factored into the price of the car. How long till we see supercharger everywhere? Probably a while, so it's not all bad.

All up, it's good, but divisive. They could have cut that division out and still had a sound policy IMO.

Post by **rhills** » Thu, 19 May 2016, 08:21

Ideally, policies favouring EVs (or any new policy actually) should be revenue-neutral at least so increasing tax on something would be a necessary part of that.

Rather than targeting luxury ICE vehicles, why not increase sales tax on all ICE vehicles. The increase would not have to be very large at all to fund some very generous support towards EVs.

In a perfect world, some of that would go towards supporting an Australian EV manufacturing industry, but I fear we've missed the boat there.

As you say, Chris, at least the Greens realise that there are Electric Vehicles and appreciate that they should be nurtured/favoured.