It looks like New South Wales Government are about to announce a new package to help get Electric Vehicle sales moving in the state.
While a number of EVs are now on the market, the numbers sold, still account for a small percentage of the overall vehicle market. With the transport sector responsible for a significant portion of our emissions, it is important that states, and our country, focuses on accelerating the adoption of sustainable transport.
After being prompted by Ben Palmer on Twitter, the NSW Minister for Energy & Environment, Matt Kean responded with a very promising reply.
We’ll have to wait and see the detail on the new package, but given the current political climate around climate change, any announcement will be welcome in this space.
An effective package would have to tackle the purchase price of the vehicle, with the initial outley being the biggest hurdle. Once you have an EV, the ongoing running costs are dramatically lower.
I’d love to see the package include discounts on stamp duty, the elimination of luxury car tax and even rebates for buying an electric vehicle. These could taper off over the next 5 years as EVs are projected to reach price parity with combustion vehicles around 2024/2025.
It’d be great to see the package offer commercial incentives for adding recharging options for a growing EV fleet. There could be a bonus on instant asset write-offs where those assets include an EV. It’d also be great to see a policy that sees a significant portion of Government fleets be made up of EVs.
With an increase in online shopping, it’d be great to see incentives for transport and logistics companies receive discounts for buying EV courier vans or delivery trucks.
NSW has an opportunity here to set a benchmark for the rest of Australian states and territories to follow.
There are only two reasons why I have not yet purchased an EV: 1. The golf e hasn’t been released to Australia yet and 2. There is no support network for EVs in terms of charging facilities across both metro and rural areas. It’s one thing to be like Italy and promote the sale of EVs by offering monetary incentives, it’s another to have a network of Charging stations within reasonable distances of each other. The gov should work with the big petrol companies to come together and create a bipartisan approach to this problem.
I hope Matt Kean is now a household name after ScoMo’s dreadful comments. Any policies that encourage EVs and/or discourage ICE vehicles are going to be vote winners (at least for those who are not blinkered by News Ltd etc).
I only wish that any encouragement could be retroactive for those early adopters who have voted with their hard-earned cash already.