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ABC News

Business

RMIT ABC Fact Check

Sussan Ley said no one in the world is making an electric ute. Is that correct?

Sussan Ley Ford United States Fact Check Australia Sky News ACE RMIT ABC Fact Check Tesla Inc. Chevrolet

The claim

On the eve of the much-anticipated Jobs and Skills Summit, the opposition has hit out at the Albanese government's failure to invite the Motor Trades Association to the two-day talkfest despite including electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla on its guest list.

Speaking to Sky News on August 26, deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley said she valued the "workers and trades that keep people safe on the road", noting that there were "20 million cars" running on internal combustion engines in Australia.

"We know we're not going to have electric vehicles tomorrow," Ms Ley said.

"And no one in the world is making an electric ute, by the way, and even if they were it would be unaffordable."

Is Ms Ley correct that no one in the world is making an electric ute? RMIT ABC Fact Check takes that claim for a spin.

The verdict

Ms Ley is wrong.

There are at least four electric utes being manufactured and sold overseas, including a ute made by Ford and an electric ute version of General Motors' Hummer.

Additionally, plans for a number of electric utes have been announced by companies such as Tesla and Chevrolet. An Australian company, ACE, is also taking reservations for its Yewt electric model.

What is a ute?

Short for "utility vehicle" or "coupé utility", the Australian ute was first invented by Ford after a farmer's wife wrote to the car manufacturer asking that it build a vehicle that could take the family to church on Sundays and pigs to market on a Monday.

That's according to the late Ford historian Adrian Ryan, whose 40-year career in the motoring industry included 14 years working for Ford's public relations team.

"The idea of combining a car and a truck together was something that [Geelong designer] Lew Bandt … came up with," Mr Ryan told the ABC in 2003.

"He took the 1933 model coupe and built the back on it and strengthened the chassis so that it would carry the load, and it was approved, and they went into production in 1934."

Paul Maric, the founder of the vehicle review website CarExpert.com.au, told Fact Check that, traditionally, a ute was a vehicle that "wasn't on a ladder frame chassis", such as the Ford Falcon ute and the Holden Commodore ute.

"They were typically just very much passenger vehicles that you could actually carry a load in," Mr Maric explained.

According to Mr Maric, utes on the market in Australia today "have a tray that sits on that ladder frame" and are more typical of what is referred to as a "pickup truck" in the US.

He added, however, that "a ute is a pickup truck and a pickup truck is a ute."

"They are one and the same thing."

Are car manufacturers making electric utes?

Mr Maric told Fact Check that Ms Ley's claim that "no one in the world is making an electric ute" was "categorically not true".

"There's a number of them available in the market — not in Australia, but there are moves to make these vehicles available in Australia," he said, noting that the Chinese car manufacturer LDV was likely to be the first to market an electric ute in Australia.

"It looks like [LDV's electric ute] has just gone on sale in New Zealand, which typically means it will then come to Australia at some point as well".

Ingrid Burfurd, a senior associate in the Grattan Institute's Transport and Cities Program, told Fact Check there were multiple car companies making electric utes.

"Overseas, there are companies that already have electric utes for sale, in production or planned for production by 2023," Dr Burfurd said in an email.

"This includes well-known companies such as Ford, Tesla and Hummer. There are also smaller and start-up companies including Rivian, GWM and Fisker."

She noted that demand for these electric utes was strong, with Ford's F-150 proving so popular that the car maker had stopped taking orders after receiving more than 45,000 in the 48 hours after opening registrations for the vehicle.

As for electric utes on the horizon, Dr Burfurd pointed to local company ACE, which is currently taking reservations for its Yewt model.

"[The Yewt] is designed more for small businesses making urban deliveries, rather than as an off-road ute, but it will broaden the range of price points and buyers for electric utes," she said.

Dr Burfurd said that the best way to encourage the supply of electric utes in Australia was to introduce an "emissions ceiling" or "emissions standard" for new vehicles.

In response to a request from Fact Check to provide a basis for the claim, a spokesperson for Ms Ley said that "the point Ms Ley was seeking to make is that EV utes are not yet commercially available in Australia".

"And even if EV utes arrived here overnight, cost-effective models — which invariably have lower distance ranges — are not yet suitable for practical use in rural and regional Australia."

What about the cost?

In making her claim, Ms Ley suggested any electric ute made available in Australia would be "unaffordable".

While this is a subjective measure, the experts did note that electric vehicles tended to be more expensive than their internal combustion engine counterparts.

"Until they are available for sale, we can't be sure how international manufacturers' electric utes will be priced in Australia," Dr Burfurd said.

"But based on evidence from the US and New Zealand, electric models will be more expensive than internal-combustion models."

Dr Burfurd pointed to the Ford F-150 Lightning, which is priced around $US11,000 more than the non-electric base model, and the LDV eT60, which was almost double the cost of the diesel model of the same car.

She noted, however, that "strong overseas demand indicates that there are plenty of consumers who find electric utes affordable, and who choose to buy electric utes even if they are more expensive than diesel models".

She also pointed to the $26,000 starting cost (not including onroad costs and taxes) of the ACE Yewt, though made clear this price point reflected its "focus on the urban, small-business market" as opposed to the off-road ute market.

Mr Maric added that the cost of the LDV eT60 in New Zealand, roughly $A70,000, was in line with the price of the most popular version of the Ford Ranger (which, according to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, was the second most popular new car sold in Australia in July 2022).

Both experts said that electric utes had added benefits for people using them as work vehicles.

"They allow owners to actually use [the utes] as generators at work sites, for example," Mr Maric said.

"If you bought a F-150 Lightning and you go to work but perhaps the worksite doesn't have electricity connected yet, you simply hook up all your tools out of the back of the ute, and you can run that worksite like you would if it was connected to street power."

Dr Burfurd agreed, stating that electric utes offered "plenty of practical benefits for people who use them as a work vehicle — for example, you can charge electric tools and laptops with an EV battery".

She also pointed out that while electric utes were more expensive to buy, they were "much cheaper to run".

"The Electric Vehicle Council estimates that, on average, it's about 70 per cent cheaper to power an electric vehicle than a diesel vehicle, which is great for people driving utes long distances to site-based jobs each day."

Principal researcher: Ellen McCutchan

factcheck@rmit.edu.au

Sources

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