The U.S. Super Bowl is as famous for its ads as its football. This year was no different except for the number of ads by big auto companies for electric cars.
My favourite was GM’s “No Way Norway” featuring Will Ferrell and the new GMC Hummer electric vehicle. It was funny, but Australia may not be laughing for much longer.
GM just announced it will stop making gasoline & diesel cars by 2035 at the same time as President Biden said he’d turn the federal government’s fleet of cars all electric too—that’s roughly 650K of them at a cost of over $2B.
No such vision from our federal government unfortunately, though they called it that. Rather belatedly Energy Minister Angus Taylor and other Ministers just launched the “Future Fuels Strategy” discussion paper, asking for feedback.
It’s been called the “do nothing document” by the Electric Vehicle Council (of which I’m a member). Mostly because it doesn’t include policies to make it more affordable to buy EVs or a phase-out date for the sale of new fossil fuel cars.
This seems like foot dragging. 23 other countries have now promised to ban petrol and diesel cars in favour of EVs within 10 to 15 years, and even Britain’s Conservative government plans to spend over $1B in subsidies for EV buyers and charging stations in an effort to phase out fossil fuel cars by 2030.
Of course the country’s private sector is already ignoring the go slow by the Australian Government and charging ahead. For example local companies JET Charge and Chargefox have now installed 6000 EV charging stations across Australia, with their CEO seeing shopping centres with their huge roofs for solar & cheap electricity as future charging destinations.
The Government’s “Future Fuels Strategy” was promised for 2019 and a final policy won’t be out till next year some time. Still you can tell them what you think through the Consultation hub open until Friday 2 April 2021. I certainly will be.
Cheers
John Fennell
