WORDS BY DANIEL BRAID
Worldwide EV Growth … but what about Australia ?
2021 is expected to be a great year for electric vehicle ( EV ) market penetration in almost all regions . In Europe , the pace of growth will continue to rise as strict CO2 legislation imposed by the European Union ( EU ) becomes more prevalent . The EU is aiming to have at least 30 million zero-emissions vehicles on its roads by 2030 with regions such as Norway , the Netherlands and Germany leading the way .
In China , although government EV incentives are dropping by 20 percent in 2021 , the country remains confident increased model variety will provide the competition needed to encourage new buyers . But there ’ s one small problem , the new vehicles have to be made first ! The outbreak of COVID-19 has put huge pressure on China ’ s EV industry with output and sales falling by more than 50 per cent year on year in the first three months of 2020 .
Over in the US , President Joe Biden has already declared his interest in sustainable vehicle technology with the intention to upgrade his entire government fleet to electric vehicles . The US fleet currently includes some 245,000 civilian cars , 173,000 military , and 225,000 post office vehicles .
“ The federal government owns an enormous fleet of vehicles , which we ’ re going to replace with clean electric vehicles made right here in America , by American workers ,” President Biden said .
“ We ’ re creating millions of jobs , a million autoworker jobs , clean energy , vehicles that are net-zero emissions – and together this will be the largest mobilization of public investment in procurement , infrastructure , and R & D since World War II .”
Back home things remain a bit more tricky and the release of Australia ’ s Future Fuels discussion paper is not exactly providing much confidence . Australian sales of electric vehicles , including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and Teslas in 2020 numbered 6900 , just 0.75 per cent of car sales and a tiny increase on the 6718 vehicles sold the previous year .
The Morrison government has revealed it won ’ t be providing European style incentives for electric vehicles any time soon , citing they don ’ t “ represent value for taxpayer money ”.
6 ISSUE 27 FEBRUARY 2021 / WWW . AFMA . ORG . AU