Tesla has launched a scathing attack on Australia’s main auto industry lobby group, accusing it of attempting to delay climate action by repeatedly making “plainly false” claims to the public about an Albanese government clean car policy.
In a submission to the government about the design of a vehicle efficiency standard, Tesla sharply criticised the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI), an organisation in which it holds a board seat and is an active member.
The Australian arm of Elon Musk’s electric car company said the lobby group had been running a “concerted public campaign” against the government plan, including claiming to multiple media outlets that it could increase the price of popular utes by up to $13,000 despite knowing this was not how the system worked.
Tesla said the FCAI was meant to represent the views of all its members, but on this issue it was “representing only one section of the industry: those companies who would continue to delay” action on the climate crisis. It said FCAI’s position was “discordant” with the public commitments of several of its members, including Ford, Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo and Mercedes-Benz, which had all said they would stop selling combustion engine models in leading markets by 2035.
Tesla said the FCAI was instead arguing for a policy regime that does next to nothing, based on an existing voluntary program that it oversees. While the lobby group has described its proposal as “ambitious”, Tesla said it had been openly discussed within FCAI that it would not cut emissions before 2030.
It estimated the FCAI’s preferred approach would lead to a 25% increase in vehicle emissions between 2024 and 2030. It said it had put this calculation to the FCAI before writing its submission and asked if it had “missed anything”. It alleged the FCAI replied: “You are missing the review process.”
Tesla took this to mean the FCAI was aware that the model it was arguing for would allow emissions to increase, but was suggesting the details could be changed years down the track.
“The FCAI knew that its targets would actually allow carmakers to increase emissions because of enormous loopholes that create hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles that only exist on paper,” Tesla said in its submission.
“Tesla is both a member of the FCAI and represented on its board, so it’s important that Tesla makes clear its disagreement with the submission made by the FCAI to this review, and with false claims it has made in the public discussion of vehicle standards.”
The FCAI’s claims that the price of the most popular petrol and diesel cars would jump by thousands of dollars under the government’s plan has been adopted by the federal Coalition, which describes the policy as a “family car and ute tax”.
A vehicle emissions standard is not a tax. It requires car companies to meet a per kilometre emissions target averaged across all the new cars it sells in a new year.
The target would lower each year. Under the government’s preferred model it would be cut by 60% by 2030. Suppliers can choose which cars they sell, but would need to offer enough fuel-efficient models to offset more polluting vehicles to meet their target.
Companies that emitted less than the required average would be rewarded credits that they could sell to cars that were above their average. Alternatively, companies that missed the required average could pay a penalty or make up the difference by selling more clean cars over the following two years.
Asked for its response to Tesla’s criticism’s, the FCAI said it had been encouraging successive governments to introduce an efficiency standard for more than a decade.
“The FCAI and its members, which includes manufacturers of vehicles ranging from battery electric through to petrol and diesel engines, want to continue to play their role in combating climate change and providing Australians with the zero and low emission vehicles they can afford, want to drive and … that meet their family, personal, recreation or work needs,” an FCAI spokesperson said.
Tesla’s submission included a critique of calculations the FCAI has given to media outlets including News.com.au, the Daily Mail and Channel 9’s Today Show that suggest the government’s preferred efficiency standard design would substantially push up the price of 18 of the country’s 20 top-selling car models. It said the FCAI had:
Based its calculations on the most polluting type of each car model only. For example, when looking at the Ford Ranger it chose only its most polluting variant, the Raptor, which emits 262 grams of CO2 per kilometre. But the government’s Green Vehicle Guide last year listed 42 variants of Ranger, including 20 that emitted less than 200g/km.
Misrepresented how an efficiency standard would work. It chose the most polluting variants of each car make, calculated how much they would emit above the allowed average, multiplied the difference by $100/g – the proposed penalty price – and added this amount to the car’s sticker price. In reality, penalties would not be applied to individual cars and companies would be expected to increase their range of clean vehicles to offset more polluting models.
Claimed two popular Tesla EV models would each fall in price by about $15,000 next year without checking with the company if this was the case.
Tesla said the claim its cars would become $15,000 cheaper was “a nonsensical claim made by FCAI without checking the facts with the car companies who actually set prices”.
The FCAI said it stood by its analysis of how vehicles sold in 2023 would be affected by the government’s preferred policy if last year’s sales patterns were repeated in 2025.
The government has said it wants a vehicle efficiency standard to start operating on 1 January next year.
