If you wanted a vehicle to draw attention to your re-election campaign, there are few vehicles better to do it than a Tesla Model 3, wrapped with your face on it. This is exactly what Katie Allen, Federal Member for Higgins has done ahead of the 2022 election.
For those unfamiliar, Higgins is an electorate located in Victoria, located in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. The seat was last won by Liberal member Katie Allen, back in May 2019 who collected 47% of the vote, which took the seat from Labor who managed just 25% of the vote.
It’s not clear if the Tesla Model 3 is a standard range model with upgraded wheels, but more likely is that this is a Model 3 Long Range in deep metallic blue (I assume to match the Liberal colours), which is a A$1,500 paint option.
If the car is indeed a Long Range mode, that puts the price of the vehicle at $79,425, or by the time you drive away, A$83,741 placing it above the Victorian ZEV Subsidy of $3,000 on new zero-emissions vehicles with a Vehicle Subtotal of less than $68,740 (including GST).
The long-range model features up to 602km (WLTP) of range, a 233km/hr top speed and 4.4s 0-100km/hr time.
Many politicians carry a heavy carbon footprint as they move around their electorates and fly to Canberra for parts of the year. It is good to see some at least trying to move towards the future by driving an electric vehicle.
It’s likely the wrap will get removed after the election meaning the few thousand dollars for a partial wrap is really an investment for a few months to get re-elected by the people of Higgins.
One interesting aspect of a Liberal Member of parliament owning an EV in Victoria, is that the state Labor Government introduced a new tax, the Zero and low emission vehicles or ZLEVs road-user charge. This sees EV owners pay 2.5cents for every km they drive, clearly in contradiction to their own $3,000 ZEV subsidy which is aimed at increasing EV adoption in the state, lowering emissions and helping the state reach its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.
The Federal Government has also just announced their latest budget this week, where they have halved the fuel excise on petrol and done nothing for electric vehicle adoption. As a member of that same Government, it’s an interesting choice for Allen to promote EVs and makes you wonder if she let Scomo know she was about to ruin the weekend.
