Jaguar recently announced that it will stop manufacturing gasoline or diesel vehicles by 2025 and will focus solely on its range of electric vehicles.
With the cheapest Jaguar currently starting at around $ 60,000 and you can pay over $ 300,000 for a top of the line model, this doesn’t seem like a headline. Except for the unlikely lottery win, most of us will never buy a brand new Jag no matter what fuel it runs on.
But it draws attention to something that governments around the world need to think about as we embark on the EV revolution: Buying EVs upfront runs the risk of locking out the very people – the low-income ones – who are on the Most would benefit from the low running costs of electric vehicles. This is especially true in Australia, where the federal government’s failure on electric vehicle policy has pushed us into the background with a poorly developed market for electric vehicles.
Governments need to recognize this EV equity issue and take action to make EVs more accessible to more people.
On the ACT, we announced $ 15,000 of interest-free loans for EV purchases, no stamp duty, and two years of free registration for those who re-register an EV, whether or not it was a new used vehicle. The free Rego offer starts this month on May 24th.
It is particularly important to ensure that used electric vehicles are also approved. Not only will these incentives help get more EVs on the road to replace gasoline vehicles, but they will also ensure that brand new car buyers will not only benefit from the incentives.
The ACT government’s vehicle fleet is in a rapid transition to all-electric (it will be 50% of the way there by mid-year), and other large corporate fleets using all-electric used electric vehicles will soon be much more widespread and more people will use cheaper vehicles Provide.
While it is still common for people to think of electric vehicles as fancy, expensive vehicles that are out of the reach of most people, that reality is changing rapidly. If you have a government with good incentives, your future electric vehicle could actually be a used ex-government fleet vehicle that you can also get a $ 15,000 interest-free loan and two years of free Rego on. That’s a very different price equation than having to decide on a new Tesla.
It is very important to overcome the upfront cost hurdle because once you overcome it, the decision will be easy for you – the running costs of electric vehicles are significantly cheaper than gasoline or diesel vehicles. A recent comparison of four ACT government vehicles – two electric vehicles, two gasoline vehicles – found that the electric vehicles saved approximately $ 1,800 per vehicle in operating and maintenance costs over an 18-month period.
For this reason, it would make sense to provide information about the total cost of ownership to consumers when purchasing a car. Like an Energy Star rating for a new refrigerator or price-per-kilogram information on supermarket shelves, total cost of ownership information would help consumers get a clearer picture of the true cost of buying and operating a particular vehicle over its total expected life.
The transition to zero-emission vehicles is critical to tackling climate change and we need to get it right. With the introduction of our incentives for electric vehicles in the ACT, we want to accelerate the positive cycle in which the more electric vehicles are sold, the faster the price will fall and the more used vehicles will be available in later years. Anyone in Australia would benefit from such guidelines.
In this case, electric vehicles will be an even clearer choice for the new buyer, and parity prices between electric vehicles and gasoline and diesel cars should only be a few years away.
Cleaner air and quieter streets that we can all enjoy are closer than you might think.
Shane Rattenbury is ACT’s Secretary of Climate Change.