Australia's position as a laggard in the global electric car race is unlikely to change despite the election of a Labor government more friendly towards clean transport, according to industry experts.
The election of Anthony Albanese's government last month has raised expectations that uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) in Australia would accelerate as a result of more generous subsidies and fewer disincentives.
Labor has pledged to cut fringe benefit and import taxes for EVs, while promising to double the amount of money spent on charging infrastructure to $500 million.
It has also vowed to end the culture wars on EVs, which the former coalition government claimed would "end the weekend", as part of an ambition to increase the technology's share of new car sales to almost 90 per cent within a decade.
Will Edmonds from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, an analysis firm, said Labor's ascension to power would likely spur demand from motorists keen to buy an electric model.
But Mr Edmonds said extra demand would not necessarily do much to boost supply.
He said there was already plenty of demand for EVs in Australia, but automakers were shunning it as a market because of the country's lack of fuel efficiency standards.
Supply, not demand, the problem
Such standards, which are in place across most of the developed world, require car makers to ensure the models they sell over a year – on average – meet minimum quality and efficiency benchmarks.
To meet them, Mr Edmonds said, automakers typically tried to sell low or zero-emitting models such as EVs to offset the sale of any polluting lines.
He said if car makers failed to meet the targets, they faced potentially steep fines.
"Automakers do face their supply constraints but they are able to prioritise their EVs for other markets," Mr Edmonds said.
"Other markets — like the EU, China and the US — have fuel emissions standards which automakers need to hit.
"This means that for every big polluting vehicle they sell, they need to sell a smaller, more efficient, ideally electric vehicle to balance this out and hit that emission target.
"It also means they have little incentive to send their scarce supply of electric vehicles here."
Automakers call for better fuel
Adding to the calls for a tougher set of fuel efficiency standards in Australia is the car lobby.
Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries chief executive Tony Weber said consumers as well as the environment were being left worse off by Australia's lack of quality controls.
Mr Weber said part of the solution involved upgrading the nation's remaining two fuel refineries to ensure they could produce better quality stocks.
But he warned that Australia would remain a global laggard unless it overhauled its fuel standards.
"Australia has the lowest quality petrol in the OECD," Mr Weber said.
In the run-up to the 2019 federal election, Labor vowed to introduce a fuel efficiency standard along with a target for 50 per cent of all new cars sold in Australia to be electric by 2030.
However, the party junked those policies in the wake the 2019 election defeat, taking a pared-back set of policies to this year's May poll.
Mr Weber said the car industry did not support a mandatory EV sales target.
Australia could fall 'further behind'
Rather, Mr Weber reasoned, fuel efficiency standards would be a better way of achieving the same outcome by allowing automakers to choose the models they supplied while improving the performance of and emissions from the 20 million cars already on Australian roads.
"There are numerous technologies out there in the marketplace that will give you low-emission outcomes," he said.
"What the government should do is not mandate that we should have electric vehicles or a percentage of hydrogen fuel cells, or any other type of technology.
"What we should do is develop a target and say to the brands, 'You need to meet that target and you need to meet that with any technology mix'.
Mr Edmonds said the absence of fuel standards would act as a handbrake on Australia's transition to cleaner transport that would only get worse the longer it lasted.
"We're already feeling the effects of not having a fuel emissions standard now," he said.
"Wait times for the Tesla model 3, which is Australia's most popular electric vehicle … in 2022 have blown out to 12 months.
"And then when it comes to other automakers, they're beginning to cancel existing models here.
"So, Europe, China, the US … their fuel emission standards ratchet up over time, meaning there's increasing pressure on automakers to send vehicles there.
"If Australia doesn't have that fuel emissions standard, it risks falling even more behind."
'The technology is here'
James and Nina Hope say anything that would help to encourage the adoption of EVs in Australia makes sense.
The couple, who run a cropping and livestock farm at Kojonup, about 300km south-east of Perth, decided to buy an EV last year.
Mrs Hope said the decision was philosophical as much as anything else.
But she said a big benefit had also been a sharp fall in fuel and maintenance costs since buying the vehicle.
"I used to spend a lot of my time driving to Albany [150km away] to get the car serviced … and it just got hard," she said.
"We just thought it was the right thing to do at the right time."
Mr Hope was similarly convinced, saying the savings in operating costs made the vehicles an attractive option.
But, he said, increasing their driving range would be key to encouraging "country owners" to buy them.
"This is … in real life a bit over 500km range," he said.
"To me, range for country owners is going to be the key."
Mr Hope said the nation's federal energy policy had been "shocking for the last three election cycles".
"We've just got to catch up with the rest of the world and be where we need to be," he said.
"The technology is here … this car is fantastic."
