The sooner we embrace electric cars the better

Labor’s policy on climate change and energy is ambitious, but a majority want bold action on these issues, which previously turned our politicians into frightened rabbits in the headlights, writes Dennis Atkins.

When Labor last won an election from Opposition — which is what the party hopes to do in a month and half — the first version of the iPhone was less than six months old.

The iPhone IOS 1.0 was introduced to the market on June 29, 2007 and Kevin Rudd realised his Nambour dream of becoming prime minister on November 24 of that year.

These days Apple sells more than 30 million iPhones a year and the biggest retailer of smartphones, Samsung, collects the cash from sales of 70 million a year.

Globally, the market for smartphones is 1.2 billion units a year.

These factoids are for the benefit of those who are scoffing at Labor’s climate change and energy policy which includes a target of having 50 per cent of new car sales electric vehicles by 2030, just a decade and a bit away.

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It’s laughable, say the critics. Look at Australia — we have long distances and we love our really big cars. For goodness sake, the Toyota Hilux is our biggest seller.

Sure, all of that is true but it’s also true that the technology is racing ahead — both in the manufacturing of the vehicles and the batteries that power them.

Bill Shorten has launched ambitious new targets for electric vehicle sales. Picture: Kym Smith

A recent report by McKinsey and Co is very bullish on the rapid trend to electric vehicles.

“Last year, for the first time, global sales of new electric vehicles (EVs) passed a million units,” says McKinsey’s Electric Vehicle Index. “Under the current growth trajectory, EV producers could almost quadruple that achievement by 2020, moving 4.5 million units, around 5 per cent of the overall global light-vehicle market.”

China’s market for EVs expanded last year by 72 per cent, making this country the biggest single consumer of electric cars.

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The other major criticism is that we’ll need charging stations on every street corner.

Yes, that’s true in theory but battery power and reliability are also growing exponentially.

The single most important fact in what McKinsey says is that the biggest and fastest growing market is China.

You can bet your 1990 Toyota Corolla the Chinese will be working overtime to do two things — reduce the price of electric vehicles and boost the power and durability of the batteries on which they run.

At the same time, they will amp up the strength of charging stations. Plugging in to charge at a convenient location on the Pacific Motorway will take a matter of minutes and that stored power will last halfway to Sydney.

We might have a soft spot for a Toyota Hilux but technology for electric cars is racing ahead. Picture: supplied

These are not science fiction dreams. There are engineers, scientists and designers who are on this right now and they will get there because there’s big money to be made.

It happened in the labs of Apple and Samsung in the mid-noughties and they now run multi-billion dollar businesses.

With all this in mind, we should take screenshots of the shallow, short-term criticism of the Labor plan for EVs and put them on the fridge for 2030. They will most likely make comic reading at that time.

Sure, this is a bold policy, but every piece of research tells us a majority want bold action on climate change including some of the issues which previously turned our politicians into frightened rabbits in the headlights.

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Just as people will mock Labor’s plan to nudge the market to EVs — and it should be noted the nudge is more subtle than critics claim — there are naysayers when it comes to expanding Queensland’s crackdown on landclearing to the rest of the country.

This again is sensible environmental policy which will help Australia meet its emissions reduction targets. The land clearing that’s occurred so far is outrageous and unsustainable.

In essence, Labor has taken the Coalition’s hidden cap and trade system and amped it up by screwing down the Morrison Government’s baselines.

The dangerous nexus in any system — which is increased under Labor’s approach — is how energy intensive, trade exposed industries (such as aluminium and LNG to give two Queensland specific examples) are treated.

Labor’s betting they can land this without large scale economic disruption. In doing so, they are likely to get high marks from voters who want something done in the here and now.

Dennis Atkins is The Courier-Mail’s national affairs editor.

@dwabriz