I like starting the year with some good news and the fact that Australia’s electric vehicle sales jumped last year was just that.
A record 1.21M new cars were sold in Australia in 2023, breaking the previous high of 1.18M set in 2017, with battery EVs 7.2% of the total—up from 3.2% in 2022—and hybrid vehicles 8.1%, up from 7.9% on the previous year.
We’re still doing abysmally compared to the rest of the world of course. A measly 3.3% of cars on Australian roads are now electric— a 65% rise on 2021 at least according to the Electric Vehicle Council—versus Germany at 26%, the UK at 19%, and California at 13%.
We love petrol heavy SUVs it seems (over half of all car sales) and successive governments here haven’t helped. I just heard that that the Albanese regime has now released their much delayed fuel efficiency policy—a standard most other western governments already have in place I should add. The new policy still has to be legislated & is not expected to come into effect by 1 January 2025–preceded by yet another 3 month round of public consultations.
It’s long overdue of course. The country has had very little choice when it comes to electric cars and last year there were reportedly only 60 EV models on sale here compared to well over 200 in Europe.
A well designed fuel efficiency standard would go a long way to rectifying that, with EV car manufacturers in the driver’s seat to benefit most. It should also help bring down the cost of EV’s which has been a sticking point for consumers, with a boost to the second hand EV market also on the cards.
More charging stations are the next big issue of course, but that’s a whole other blog.
Cheers, John Fennell.