Trevor St Baker partners with Warren Buffet backed BYD in $20m EV bet

Rich-lister Trevor St Baker is partnering with Warren Buffet-backed BYD to bring mass market electric cars into Australia.

Rich-lister Trevor St Baker is making a $20m bet on the adoption of mass-market electric cars in Australia, with plans to import EVs costing less than $35,000 into the country.

Mr St Baker, who last week sealed a $2.2bn deal to launch Brisbane-based electric car charging company Tritium on Nasdaq, will partner with Warren Buffet-backed BYD to import EVs into Australia amid fears the country is slipping behind other nations in EV adoption.

China-based BYD is now one of the world’s largest electric vehicle makers, selling more than 415,000 cars in its home market last year.

BYD plans to launch a range of cars that include at least two SUVs, a small car and a sports sedan.

The $20m investment designed to encourage the average Australian to buy their first EV will be made by Mr St Baker in Sydney-based TrueGreen Mobility through his St Baker Energy Innovation Fund (StBEIF).

Mr St Baker said the partnership would see the launch of a public sales showroom in Sydney within months as the new vehicles were offered for sale.

He said TrueGreen Mobility aimed to provide the “missing link” in Australia’s electric future by providing competitively priced commercial and passenger EVs that can retail for less than $35,000.

Mr St Baker said the electrification of cars was “unstoppable” with the vehicles now within reach of average Australians. He said the cost of running an electric vehicle was a fraction of petrol models with minimum maintenance required.

“It works out to be about 3 cents a kilometre if you are charging at home compared to 15 cents for a petrol driven car,” he said.

True Green managing director Luke Todd said with 75 percent of Australians saying they would be willing to look at an electric model for their next car, the time was right to introduce a mass market model to the country.

The BYD range of cars would be supported by depot charging stations already provided by other StBEIF’s investments.

TrueGreen Mobility currently supplies electric buses to clients such as the NSW government and holds the rights to exclusively distribute BYD passenger and commercial vehicles in the Australasian market.

Vehicles and the associated charging infrastructure would be available within months with light commercial EVs ready for delivery in September 2021 and passenger EVs scheduled to go on-sale in August and be delivered from March 2022.

StBEIF chief executive Rodger Whitby said the roll out signalled a pivotal point for the electric market in Australia, with affordable EVs and ultrafast charging infrastructure the recipe for rapid public uptake.

“Local EV uptake still lags significantly behind the global trend,” said Mr Whitby. “However Australian drivers can now confidently plan for their next vehicle purchase to be electric.”

He said the investment was the cornerstone for considerable further investment into the charging network. “We have now reached the inflection point to confidently transition towards zero emission vehicles with competitively priced vehicles making clean transport more accessible to millions of Australians,” he said.

Mr St Baker has warned Australia risked being left behind in electric cars development due to poor policy direction from governments.

“There is a lack of leadership,” said Mr St Baker. “No one is going to get to zero emissions without a move to renewables. They can waffle about hydrogen but it is going to be electric.

“In 20 years there will be no petrol bowsers — they will all be electric chargers Shell is preparing to buy half a million chargers and there are no global car manufacturers putting any new investment into internal combustion engines.”

Mr Todd said TrueGreen Mobility would look at a listing next year as it moved to build on Mr St Baker’s substantial investment.

He said the company also was looking to build electric buses in Queensland for the State Government and Brisbane City Council in conjunction with BYD, which could eventually employ hundreds of people.