Elon Musk backs Bill Shorten’s electric vehicle target

Tesla boss says EV sales may hit 50% of new cars even faster than Bill Shorten’s 2030 target.

Elon Musk, co-founder and chief executive officer of Tesla Inc.

Tesla boss Elon Musk has weighed in on Labor’s electric vehicle policy, declaring EV sales could hit 50 per cent of new cars even faster than Bill Shorten’s 2030 target.

The electric vehicle guru, who built the “world’s biggest battery” in South Australia at the end of 2017, made the claim in response to a tweet from fellow tech-entrepreneur Mike Cannon-Brookes.

Musk cited the experience in Norway, which offers subsidies and benefits of about $3400 per EV to encourage EV uptake.

“Norway has already proven it could be done last month. No question Australia could do this in far fewer than 11 years,” he tweeted.

Norway has already proven it could be done last month. No question Australia could do this in far fewer than 11 years.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 10, 2019

Brookes declared Scott Morrison’s claim that Labor’s policy would “end the weekend” was “Batshit insane”.

Mr Morrison said this morning that he wasn’t opposed to EVs, declaring the government had a policy to encourage the take-up of the vehicles and roll out charging infrastructure.

“This isn’t about electric cars, this is about the fact that Bill Shorten can’t explain what his policies mean to Australians,” he said.

“It’s not just about the 50 per cent target that he has to achieve to take the car market from 0.2 per cent to 50 per cent in the next 10 years. It is the vehicles emissions standard that he is not telling you about, it is 105g (of CO2) per kilometre.

“There are only three out of the top 20 selling cars today that actually meet that standard.”