The responsibility comes back to state and federal government as well . What role do you think they have in encouraging EV uptake ?
I think all levels of government should be encouraged to provide uptake in lower or no emission vehicles where they can . There are several great programs that are happening across the country . Our own state government is putting in some money to try and accelerate some of this uptake and I know that ’ s happening in other jurisdictions as well .
I think everyone ’ s got a part to play in trying to promote EVs and we ’ ve seen that with incentives . We saw those incentives in the solar industry in recent years and now Australia dominates the world in terms of solar uptake . Now in that industry incentives have been virtually phased out because the industry is up and running . We probably could do with some similar incentives in the EV space to get those whole life costs at an acceptable level for new players to enter the market .
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ) released their findings earlier this month on climate change with some damning revelations . What ’ s your thoughts on what those findings mean for fleets ?
I think that it ’ s concerning . The IPCC ’ s reports are compiled by some 234 different scientists who volunteer their time representing about 135 countries and covering some 14,000 research articles and publications . It ’ s a lot of research and it ’ s unequivocal that humans with the use of fossil fuels are continuing to warm the climate and we ’ re seeing the impacts of that with severe weather across the planet .
Greece are the latest victims with their fires , and Australia in recent summer seasons obviously saw some horrific fires as well . We ’ ve seen bad flooding in Germany as well on the other end of the scale . These weather events will continue which does make it a challenge for any organisation to operate in some of those climates because these weather events can hit quickly and be pretty severe .
14 ISSUE 30 AUGUST 2021 / WWW . AFMA . ORG . AU