With no fuel standard, we’re an EV ‘dumping ground’

Australia is seen as a ‘backwater’ by the electric vehicle industry due to our lack of fuel efficiency standards but a small change could bring a return to the golden years of car manufacturing.

In 2022, the Electric Vehicle Council reported 3.8 per cent of all new cars purchased in Australia were EVs, a substantial 86 per cent increase from 2021.

Australia is seen by the global electric vehicle industry as a “backwater” and is being used as a dumping ground for older, less efficient vehicles due to its historic lack of fuel efficiency standards, according to industry leaders.

We’re slowly catching up to the rest of the world when it comes to buying and manufacturing electric vehicles, but are still “two times” behind every other developed country with a standard in place, says Electric Vehicle Council chief executive Behyad Jafari.

“These (FES) are rules for car companies to say, whether you’re selling a big diesel ute or a small hatchback, you have to make those cars more fuel-efficient, use less petrol or diesel, to do the same job over time,” Mr Jafari said.

Australia and Russia are the only developed countries that do not have fuel efficiency standards. This means there is less incentive for light vehicle manufacturers to invest in bringing their most efficient technologies to countries such as Australia, and there is less incentive to buy EVs.

In 2022, the council reported 3.8 per cent of all new cars purchased in Australia were EVs, a substantial 86 per cent increase from 2021. However, when compared to the global average for the same year – 12 to 14 per cent – it is clear we still have a way to go to catch up to the rest of the developed world.

The federal government is in the process of writing the country’s first FES, following a submissions process this year. There were more than 1200 submissions from individuals and organisations, “overwhelmingly” supporting the introduction of an FES.

“Australia has never had those standards in place, although the federal government is working on them now, but they’ve been working on them for the last 12 months and we’re telling them to hurry up and get on with it,” Mr Jafari said.

“All the countries that have regulations in place, they get the latest and best stuff and the leftovers, they (manufacturers) say, ‘well, we can either throw all this stuff out or we can go and dump them in countries that don’t have this technology yet’.”

Beyond an FES, Australia has the opportunity to bring back a semblance of its car manufacturing golden years, Mr Jafari said. Due to it lagging behind other developed countries, the realistic next step is to invest in developing Australia’s technical, or “purple collar” workforce, to manufacture EV parts such as batteries.

“Purple collar is a combination of (the) blue and white collar workforce. (Car) manufacturing today is less about thousands of people turning knobs, and more about very highly skilled and highly paid workers building robots that build robots that turn knobs,” he said.

“If we were to attract a manufacturing industry for, say, electric vehicle batteries, or refining metals for electric vehicle batteries in Australia, those are highly skilled, highly paid jobs, which are perfect because they’re rightly the jobs that Australians want.

“Quite often what we find is there are people from around the world trying to get Australian talent, and what better way to do that than by having a factory in Australia where all the Australians happen to be.”

The Electric Vehicle Council was co-founded in 2009 by The Myer Foundation and Monash University as a national body representing the industry in Australia, whose members provide various EV-related services and support, from software to car manufacturing, including Tesla Australia, BMW and Volvo.