Tag Archives: EVs

Perhaps, I Really Am Clairvoyant Or Is Politics Just That Obvious?

September 29, 2024
Written by: Rossleigh
8 Replies

The wonderful serendipity of the internet caused me to stumble across something I wrote or in February, 2017. (You can read the whole thing if you like by clicking on this link: The Future Is Different! If That Seems Obvious Then Why Are So Many Acting As Though It Isn’t!).

Anyway, remembering this was written in 2017 which was before 2019 where those with long memories will remember that Scott Morrison told us that Bill Shorten would destroy the weekend with his plan to have a 2030 target for EVs of fifty percent of new cars sold. Those with long memories will also remember that Mr Morrison assured us in 2022 that he said nothing against electric cars and that he was just against Labor’s policy of “forcing” everyone to have one by adopting a target of 50% electric vehicles at a date ten years into the future. In the 2017 piece I wrote:

Actually, I wonder if Tony and Malcolm and Scott had been alive a hundred years ago whether we’d have heard something like this:

“The horse and cart will be part of our transport mix for a long time to come. Some states are putting unrealistic targets on the number of automobiles and are suggesting that by 1930 we’ll have as much as fifty percent of our goods moved by truck. Let’s be clear we need a baseload system and you can’t go past the horse for that. While some people are complaining about the horseshit, we think that it’s important to remember that it’s a naturally occuring thing and good for plants, so how could it be damaging to anyone’s health? The fact remains that automobiles are currently much, much more expensive to run than horses and they are nowhere near as reliable. The idea that they’ll ever be produced in the sort of numbers that would bring their price down to where they’d be able to compete with horses is just a silly dream. Besides, it’s all right for those in the city, but once you venture into the country, where will you get the petrol from? It’s not like they’ll ever have a way of providing petrol outside the major cities like Sydney and Melbourne. No, we in the Liberal Party are committed to the horse and cart, while Labor are pushing transport costs higher with their suggestion that the new, expensive invention can provide a reliable means of transport.”

I must say that I’ve decided that I shouldn’t be writing satire. Instead I should be writing speeches and electoral material for the Liberal Party because I imagine that it’s a very well paid job. Ok, I might have to tone down the irony a bit, but if that’s too hard, I could always write David Littleproud’s speeches, or take over Vikki Campion’s column, unless the latter job comes with the requirement of marrying Barnaby.

Speaking of Ms. Campion, I notice that she was quoting “research” which suggested that wind farms could make bushfires worse because there’d be a “drying effect” downwind. While I’m not an expert in the field but, unlike Andrew Bolt, I actually have a tertiary degree even if it is in Arts with a Drama Major, I still feel that I am qualified to ask respectfully, “What the actual fuck is the person on?”. If someone has more expertise than me on the topic, I’d like to know how placing a wind turbine or two in front of a wind would create more a stronger wind behind the wind farm and whether that would lead to a significant drying of the bush.

Notwithstanding my objections to Peter Dutton’s world view, I am quite prepared to forego that if the price is right and offer a few thoughts for his attempt to pretend that the Coalition have actually developed an energy policy that will last longer than Liz Truss’s tenure as British PM once they were in government.

Liberal Energy Talking Points for Election:

Renewables need renewing whereas once we’ve used uranium in the nuclear plant we won’t be using it again.
Wind farms will slow the wind which will make the planet hotter.
While gas and coal can be taxed, we can’t tax the sun or wind, so there’ll be less money for things like hospitals and roads.
The sun won’t last forever and once it goes, solar won’t work.

Mm, I hope Mr Dutton doesn’t see these and purloin them without giving me a job!

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The Morrison enigma

December 6, 2021
Written by: The AIM Network
17 Replies

By Ad astra

It’s becoming alarming. Every day our Prime Minister becomes more verbose, more shouty, more insistent. The old-fashioned word ‘blatherskite’ comes to mind. Listen to him as he fronts journalists, answers questions in Question Time, or delivers his characteristic off-the-cuff oratory on any subject he chooses, from protestors to carbon capture and storage to electric cars.

In a cute appraisal in The Guardian you can read how Sarah Martin mocked his electric car approach with these acerbic words:

In a galling pivot, Scott Morrison hopes he can peek under the bonnet of an EV and be accepted as a convert.

Not so long ago he said Labor’s electric cars policy would ‘end the weekend’, and now he’s spruiking his own plan, but there’s no substance to it.

It’s hard to say which element of Scott Morrison’s new electric vehicle strategy is most galling. If you missed the unveiling on Tuesday, there’s not much to catch up on, given the strategy has all the substance of a Corn Thin.

The Coalition’s “strategy” for electric vehicle take-up contains $178m of government spending on EV infrastructure but no new policies, just like its “Australian Way” plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. It rebuffs calls for vehicle emissions standards and provides no market signal to incentivise take-up – the two measures viewed by experts as the most important to drive change.

But while a policy document three years in the making that is entirely bereft of substance is certainly offensive, it is nowhere near as galling as the way in which Morrison expects voters to forgive and forget the Coalition’s position on electric vehicles ahead of the 2019 election.

As he unveiled the government’s new clean car policy that embraced electric cars, Morrison attempted to deflect accusations of hypocrisy by denying he had attacked electric vehicles before the 2019 federal election when he had insisted Labor would “end the weekend”.

The government has already ruled out subsidising the expansion of electric and hybrid vehicles through rebates or tax breaks, saying it expected only 30% of new sales to be EVs by 2030 – a date by which a growing number of countries plan to ban altogether the sale of new petrol and diesel cars.

The “future fuels and vehicles strategy” instead includes $178m of new funding, mostly for new EV and hydrogen refuelling infrastructure and to help businesses set up charging stations for fleets. It said the government would “co-invest with industry” to install an estimated 50,000 smart chargers in homes. Under questioning at a press conference in Melbourne, Morrison denied he had criticised EV technology before the last election. But the records show that at that time he had insisted: ”battery-powered cars would ‘not tow your trailer’; ‘not tow your boat’; ‘not get you out to your favourite camping spot with your family’.” Touché!

Morrison claimed his criticism had been limited to Labor’s then-policy, not the technology itself, and that he did not regret saying EVs would “end the weekend”.

“I don’t have a problem with electric vehicles, I have a problem with governments telling people what to do and what vehicles they should drive and where they should drive them, which is what [former opposition leader] Bill Shorten’s plan was,” Morrison said at Toyota’s hydrogen centre in suburban Altona.

“I’m not going to put up the price of petrol [for] families and make them buy electric vehicles, and walk away from the things they have. That is not the Liberal way and the Nationals way.”

The Shorten-era Labor policy was not to tell people what vehicle they should drive, require anyone to buy an EV or put up the price of petrol. It included a non-binding target of 50% new car sales being EVs by 2030 and the promise of a vehicle emissions standard to reduce the average carbon pollution of the national car fleet.

Morrison stressed the government would not “be forcing Australians out of the car they want to drive or penalising those who can least afford it through bans or taxes. Just as Australians have taken their own decision to embrace rooftop solar at the highest rate in the world, when new vehicle technologies are cost-competitive, Australians will embrace them too”.

The expansion of rooftop solar – which, according to the Clean Energy Council, has now led to 3m systems being installed across the country – was encouraged for more than a decade through federal and state incentives and subsidies.

The government vehicle strategy suggests its approach will have only a limited impact as a climate policy. It is projected to cut greenhouse gas emissions by just 8m tonnes – less than 2% of the national annual total – over the next 14 years.

Transport emissions are nearly 20% of the national total, were increasing rapidly before Covid-19 lockdowns and are projected to escalate in the years ahead.

Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, said the future policy was “another pamphlet, rather than a serious announcement”. He said a Labor government would make EVs cheaper by removing import and fringe benefits tax. “I think people will look at Scott Morrison today and this announcement and just shake their head and say, ‘What’s changed?’,’This is a guy who says he’s about new technology. Yet he’s resisted it.”

The energy and emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, said the government’s strategy of helping install charging infrastructure, rather than phasing out fossil fuel cars, was about helping motorists “embrace the increasing range of technologies available to keep them moving in an informed and fair way”. He claimed credit for the number of low emissions vehicle models available in Australia increasing by 20% over the past eight months, but did not explain how the government’s policy had contributed to this.

Car manufacturers across the globe have released a wave of new EV models as governments have announced emissions limits for passenger cars and future bans on fossil fuel cars. Industry representatives say Australians have fewer options than comparable countries due to a lack of policy support.

Once more, Australians face the risk of being left behind. What’s new!

This article was originally published on The Political Sword

For Facebook users, The Political Sword has a Facebook page:
Putting politicians and commentators to the verbal sword

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Electric Car Delusions

November 21, 2021
Written by: Dr Binoy Kampmark
15 Replies

Fresh from attending COP26 in Glasgow, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was keen to impress the Australian public that he was willing to make good his word about the role technology would play in combating climate change. An important component of his limited strategy lies in the realm of electric cars, the very thing he warned Australians against in 2019. His then opposite number, Labor’s Bill Shorten, was accused by the prime minister during the election campaign of wishing to end the Australian weekend. “I’ll tell you what, it’s not going to tow your trailer. It’s not going to tow your boat,” he warned.

Things, however, had changed. COP26, pressure from other countries, and potential electoral pressure within traditional Coalition seats, had made the prime minister shift his position. In a joint press release from the Prime Minister and Energy Minister Angus Taylor, the government promised, as part of the Future Fuels Fund investment, $250 million on vehicle charging and hydrogen fuelling infrastructure; heavy and long-distance vehicle technologies; commercial fleets and household smart charging.

In terms of numbers, 400 businesses, 50,000 households will be affected, and 1000 public charging stations created. With an eye towards private investment, the hope is that there will be over $500 million “of combined private and public co-investment directed into the update of future fuels in Australia and the creation of more than 2,600 new jobs.”

When asked why he had essentially adopted, if only in lite version, a variant of the condemned Labor opposition policy from 2019, Morrison gave a ducking answer. “I don’t have a problem with electric vehicles, I have a problem with governments telling people what to do and what vehicles they should drive and where they should drive them, which is what [the opposition’s] plan was.”

On the commercial breakfast show “Sunrise”, the Prime Minister found himself being corrected by host Natalie Barr like an errant school child. “The Labor Party were not forcing people. It was not a mandate at the last election that they were introducing, it was a non-binding target of 50 percent [of new EVs by 2030].” Morrison, balletically evading the point, insisted that Labor “were going to put up the price of fuel.”

The new EV policy did little to move Electric Vehicle Council chief executive Behyad Jafari. “We’ve been waiting some two years for this policy that’s already about a decade overdue,” he told Radio 6PR Breakfast. The policy was “the first five pages of a book, rather than the whole thing.”

Australia’s hostility to EVs has not gone unnoticed. In 2020, the rise in battery-powered vehicles in the European and the UK came in at 10%. In Australia, it was a barely nudging 0.7%. In terms of efforts to decarbonise road transport, Australia has been ranked in the lower tiers of the Group of 20, lagging behind Turkey and Indonesia.

Such figures have done little to impress carmakers such as Volkswagen AG, who stated earlier this year that its ID.3 and ID.4 electric vehicles were unlikely to appear in Australia before 2023. “Hardly a day goes by when we don’t get an inquiry from someone who would dearly love to buy a Volkswagen electric vehicle,” stated the company’s Australian chief, Michael Bartsch in March, “and we have to tell them we don’t know when we can introduce them.”

The office of the Energy Minister, Angus Taylor, officiously dismissed such remarks at the time, suggesting that Australia would not “be lectured about vehicles emissions by a car manufacturer that has a track record of deceiving motorist and violating clean-air laws.”

The modest attempt to redress this state of affairs does not compare with incentives that are being promoted at the state level. The New South Wales government has promised to contribute more to the entire program in the state than the Commonwealth will across the entire country. NSW Treasurer Matt Kean may well be from the same party as the Prime Minister, but on environmental policy, their song sheets are markedly different.

A day after Morrison’s announcement of a future fuels fund to build charging stations across the country, Kean revealed that $105 million in additional funding to encourage EVs in his state would be provided. This would complement the June commitment by the NSW government valued at $490 million, which involves waiving stamp duty on EV purchases, $3,000 rebates for up to 25,000 vehicles under $68,750, deferring road user charge until 2027 and expenditure on charging infrastructure. “This is a revolution which is coming whether [Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals leader] Barnaby Joyce likes it or not,” promised the Treasurer.

On the ABC’s 7.30 program, Kean also had a few words regarding Morrison’s own EV initiative: “the funding they’ve put on the table doesn’t even match the funding that we’ve put here just for the state of NSW.”

The NSW policy did much to stir Bartsch. The state had “shown its federal colleagues and its counterpart in Victoria the way to bring about mass ownership of affordable electric vehicles.” Kean could not be faulted for his “targets for private ownership and fleet take-up of EVs.” But the NSW Treasurer has gone further, announcing that his government will be signing the COP26 Declaration on the transition to zero-emission vehicles by 2040, thereby setting a target Morrison has been loathe to commit to.

The reluctance on the part of the Commonwealth to do more in terms of subsidies, rewarding EV manufacturers, and establishing enforceable CO2 emission standards will continue to make car vendors seek other markets in the green transition. Australia may well escape the potential fate of being a “third world dumping ground” for polluting car technology, but at this point, it is in no danger of moving into the first world of battery-powered efficiency.

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Fear, Deception and Gravitas

May 8, 2019
Written by: 2353NM
7 Replies

Enjoying the election coverage? Essentially it is the day-to-day analysis of the political leaders of this country racking up the kilometres to appear in ‘strategic’ locations, with nodding sycophants behind them answering the same or similar questions as they did yesterday to the same tired and bored journalists who then dutifully make something out of the tedium, record it and send it back to base for consumption on the 6pm news. The next day the caravan moves to another ‘strategic’ location, with some different nodding sycophants and the practice will be repeated ad nauseam until 18 May.

There are interesting moments in an election campaign where people go off script, say something blatantly stupid or demonstrate in front of a group of TV cameras that they are human and can, as a result, stuff it up. The human stuff ups and off-script ‘incidents’ are understandable, such as Shorten’s ‘correction’ to his no new superannuation taxes statement when he didn’t explicitly exclude the increased tax component of a superannuation policy that the ALP released 3 years ago. After all, actors spend weeks and months to learn their lines with expression and actions, we expect the likes of Shorten and Morrison to remember their lines (without knowing the sequence of questions) for every day of an election campaign with little notice, being away from home, keeping quiet on what policies they haven’t released and assessing if there are any holes in the other guy’s arguments that they can exploit. No wonder it sometimes doesn’t go as intended.

While Shorten demonstrated he can stuff it up, the Coalition has demonstrated time and time again it really has nothing left to contribute except their claimed ‘achievements’, fear, uncertainty and deception. When Shorten claimed as part of an emissions reduction policy that he will create a target of 50% of new vehicle sales (emphasis added) to be made up of electric vehicles within a decade, Morrison and the Coalition, despite their own government considering the same target, were all over the policy with negatives, creating fear and deception over the future of electric vehicles based on the current cost and ability to ‘refuel’ electric vehicles on the road today. True – Australia doesn’t generally have the infrastructure to ‘refuel’ electric vehicles within the same timeframes and levels of convenience as petrol or diesel-powered vehicles in 2019, however as the ‘Historic England’ website reminds us:

Today we fill up our cars with petrol from pumps at filling stations, but for the first 25 years of British motoring such things didn’t exist. Instead, you could only buy petrol in two-gallon cans from chemists, hardware shops and hotels, as well as from garages. Then petrol filling stations began to appear.

Simple economics (allegedly a Coalition strongpoint) will tell you if there is a demand for the infrastructure the market will satisfy that demand, in this case probably using a combination of grid and renewable generation sources.

Society adapts to technological change. Almost every medium or large shopping centre has a mobile phone store in 2019, 30 years ago that wasn’t the case. It’s the same with time shifting a TV show. The VCR gave way to the smaller DVD recorder, which has given way to the Personal Video Recorder that has greater usability. A large number of people now prefer to stream content as required from the Internet on their touchscreen device rather than use a recorder at all.

Electric vehicles are coming regardless of if we like it or not and there are already recharging facilities available (albeit not necessarily at highly visible petrol sales outlets). Apart from the high-profile Tesla ‘superchargers’, Queensland has the ‘electric superhighway’ from Coolangatta to Cairns (and Toowoomba), Western Australia has the ‘RAC electric highway’ and the NRMA in NSW is also planning to introduce a network of electric vehicle chargers. Charge Point and Chargefox also have apps that advise where their charging locations are (and handle the user payments).

The poor deluded souls rolled out by the Coalition parties during this election campaign claiming technology doesn’t exist to create an electrically powered ute, pull a trailer or travel a reasonable distance are simply wrong. The technology is already available. Toyota has already announced that all its vehicles (including utes) will have an electric (plug-in or hybrid) option by 2025. RIvian, an US startup backed by Amazon, are openly discussing selling a battery powered ute in Australia by 2022 and Haval intend on having a battery-powered Great Wall ute on sale in Australia before then.

The Toronto Transit Commission in Canada is currently taking delivery of 60 battery powered buses. They hope to reduce the current CA$90million annual diesel bill for their 2,000 buses to CA$0 by 2040 (although there will be a cost implication in recharging 2,000 buses). TTC believe that each bus will be capable of 250km between charges – which is considerably more than the average daily distance travelled by cars, utes and vans in Australia so the economics seem to stack up as well and will get cheaper as the technology matures.

The new tram system in Newcastle NSW runs on batteries with automatic recharging at tram stops while passengers are boarding and alighting and (where else but) Byron Bay already has a full size solar powered train that runs to a seven day a week timetable for about 3km each trip.

As the Coalition is getting electric vehicles so fundamentally wrong – you have to ask what other issues they are relying on fear and deception to address because they don’t have the answer (without splitting their political parties into pieces).

Michaela Cash will probably take the 2019 election ‘blatantly stupid’ award from a long line of wannabes by trying to mimic Charlton Heston’s take my gun from my ‘cold dead hand’ speech with her comment:

“We are going to stand by our tradies and we are going to save their utes,” Ms Cash told reporters.

“We understand choice and that is what Bill Shorten is taking away from our tradies.”

A link to one of Heston’s ‘cold dead hand’ speeches is here. Is Cash, apart from not having a clue, lacking a certain gravitas?

What do you think?

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Tag Archives: EVs

Perhaps, I Really Am Clairvoyant Or Is Politics Just That Obvious?

The Morrison enigma

Electric Car Delusions

Fear, Deception and Gravitas