The body representing the electric vehicle industry in Australia has called for an extra $3.2 billion to be spent on infrastructure to increase the number of such cars on Australian roads to three million by 2030.
The scenario was modelled in a new report for the Electric Vehicle Council (EVC) that said a boost to public charging infrastructure would help achieve a Norway-like penetration of electric vehicles in Australia.
The New South Wales motorists’ organisation, the NRMA, has backed the plan, and is rolling out $10 million worth of public chargers in NSW, paid for with members’ funds.
EVC chief executive Behyad Jafari has called for measures to reduce electric vehicle prices by up to $7000, including fringe benefits and luxury car tax exemptions, and the axing of stamp duty and registration charges by the states.
Such exemptions have been commonplace in Europe and North American for some years.
The Energy Minister in the conservative Liberal-National federal government, Josh Frydenberg, who has predicted one million electric vehicles in Australia by 2030, said the government would back measures to speed the “revolution”, through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
“The government stands ready to support the rollout of vehicles, as we are currently doing,” Mr Frydenberg said.
The minister, who has been criticised by some Liberal-National politicians over his support for electric vehicles, flagged that they would get a further boost from policy changes to lower carbon emissions.
“The work we are doing through the Vehicle Emissions Forum will be important in incentivising, in the future, the take-up of more electric vehicles,” Mr Frydenberg said.
News Limited reports a sponsor of the report and energy technology investor Trevor St Baker expressed the hope that taxpayers and the private sector would fund the infrastructure rollout through public-private partnerships.
The report follows a study by New Zealand’s biggest electricity distributor warning next-generation electric vehicles with bigger batteries, and preference for faster chargers, could multiply a household’s load on the power grid by up to 20 times.
However, Mr Frydenberg, who is trying to secure a deal with the states and territories to improve the reliability of the power grid, said he was relying on the advice of Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel that the extra demand on the electricity network could be “relatively easily managed”.
The Electric Vehicle Council report, prepared by PwC, said the Liberal-National governments planned National Energy Guarantee “must plan to ensure dispatchable electricity is able to meet the needs of electric vehicle operations”.
The scenario assumed 57 per cent of vehicles sold in Australia by 2030 would be electric vehicles.
This would prevent 18 million tonnes of carbon emissions, according to the report, because electric vehicles charged on the grid emitted about half the amount of CO2 per kilometre compared with internal combustion vehicles.
However, this is at odds with a 2016 study for the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development that found the high reliance on coal-fired power in Victoria, NSW and Queensland meant electric vehicles charged on the grid in those states “have a higher CO2 output than those emitted from the tailpipes of comparative petrol cars”.
That claim has been rejected by other studies.
Meanwhile, Liberal MP Craig Kelly, who chairs the Liberal-National government’s environment and energy committee, has warned against charging taxpayers to help people buy electric vehicles.
“The risk is you’ll have the rich person in Balmain buying a Tesla, subsidised by a bloke in Penrith who’s driving a Corolla,” he claimed, although this too has been refuted by other studies.
