Tesla makes massive call to get petrol cars off Australian roads

Tesla has revealed more about its future in Australia with more electric vehicles on the way.

THE number of Teslas on our roads will likely double this year, the company’s global chair believes, but Australia should be looking to New Zealand, the US and Canada to spur greater uptake of electric vehicles.

Speaking at the Clean Energy Summit in Sydney on Tuesday, Tesla’s Australian-born chair Robyn Denholm pointed to overseas jurisdictions as examples of the sorts of public policy settings needed to increase the transition to electric vehicles.

New Zealand had until recently been in a similar position to Australia with sluggish sales of EVs, she said, but a government discount scheme for buyers had seen sales triple.

In Vancouver, Canada, all new family homes had to be “EV ready”, while in California, approvals processes for new charging facilities were being streamlined in order to meet a state target of having 1.2 million stations operational by 2030.

Ms Denholm said the company’s “global fleet” had grown fivefold in three years, with more than 2.5 million Teslas sold by the first quarter of 2022, up from 500,000 in 2019.

But just 26,500 Teslas had been sold in Australia to date – about one per cent of the total.

Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm speaking at the Australian Clean Energy Summit in Sydney.

“Australia is behind on the shift to electric vehicles [EVs]. Today, electric vehicles make up 2 per cent of the new car market,” Ms Denholm said.

But of the 26,5000 Teslas sold so far, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we double that number by the end of this year,” she said.

Australia was the only market where Tesla Powerwall home batteries were outselling vehicles, Ms Denholm revealed, with 33,000 units already installed in Aussie homes, compared to 300,000 globally.

Global sales of the Powerwall units have gone up sixfold since 2019, she revealed.

The global drive towards batteries – whether they be used in cars or in the family home – was a “once in a century opportunity” for Australia, Ms Denholm said.

“No technology is more important right now than lithium batteries,” she said.

At the moment, Australia produced half of the world’s raw lithium but only 7 per cent of the refined product, and it was imperative the country “move up the value chain”, Ms Denholm said.

Ms Denholm’s comments came a day after the ACT announced a hard target for the phasing out of international combustion engine cars by 2035, a move which prompted some industry criticism.

Others have expressed doubt that Australia would ever embrace EVs, given our size, but a recent study from Australian National University (ANU) found the use of such cars in remote communities was more feasible than might be expected.

EVs would get 93 per cent of Australians from their home to their nearest ‘service hub’ town, the ANU team found.

Tesla vehicle ownership in Australia was “concentrated in the cities,” Ms Denholm said, “but you’ll find them in remote locations as well, proving that Australia’s great distances are not a barrier to owning an electric vehicle”.

Originally published as Tesla makes massive call to get petrol cars off Australian roads