By Jo Nova
New “emission” rules for cars started in January, but EV sales are falling and manufacturers are starting to panic
If the Labor government said it was going to make us pay a $10,000 fee on a fossil fuel car so it could give $10,000 to our rich neighbor to buy an EV, there would be mayhem and outrage in the streets. So instead they’ve come up with* a tricky scheme to force car manufacturers to do something like that, and they hope the complexity will fool the people. The new car tax and forced subsidy payments are called the “New Vehicle Efficiency Standard” (NVES) which makes it sound nicer and less Soviet, but really, the scheme is pure politburo management.
The Soviets were infamous for making 800 million pairs of shoes of the wrong sort . Somehow the Russian people had to stand for hours in queues to get one pair that they wanted, and so it is that Commissar Albanese has decreed the kinds of cars Australians will want, whether they like it or not. Like the Russians, we too will pay extra, or wait for years to get what we want.
As of January 1 2025, the government now is forcing manufacturers to sell “a balanced fleet” that meets the average emissions target the government set. In effect, they have turned the manufacturers into tax managers. The government tells Australians “you can buy whatever car you want” — but since the car companies can’t sell whatever car they want, it means customers have to change what they want. This is not a free market.
Obviously, companies selling too many “bad” high emission cars are going to have raise prices on those cars to slow down the sales, and they’ll have to drop the prices of the unpopular low emissions cars to boost them. Perhaps they’ll have to give them away to meet the targets? It might be cheaper than paying the fines.
In the end, it means only the rich will be able to afford the fossil fuel cars that most people want. The poor will have to settle for a subsidized EV, or they will have to pay more for the car they want, and subsidize the rich man buying the EV as a second car.
There is a reason Donald Trump has just dumped the 50% EV target scheme in the US.
The car manufacturers face big fines if they can’t sell enough EV’s
The targets are delusional magic wand edicts — thou shalt reduce carbon emissions of new cars by 60% in five years! And the fines are savage. The new rule has only been in place for 3 months and already manufacturers can see, at this rate, they may end up paying $2.7 billion in fines. Insufferable:
‘Car yards full of EVs people don’t want’: Mitsubishi Australia boss warns Labor over vehicle targets
by Greg Brown, The Australian
In a new front in the growing industry push for Anthony Albanese to revamp his climate and energy policy, Mitsubishi Motors Australia chief executive Shaun Westcott said the government needed to rethink the aggressiveness of its targets aimed at lowering the carbon footprint of new cars by 60 per cent by 2030.
The sector is anticipating the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard, which came into effect in January, would lead to car suppliers paying $2.7bn in fines by the end of the decade for missing carbon-emission requirements.
EV sales fell from 9.6% of the market a year ago, down to 5.9% last month:
Australian EV sales down once again in February, Tesla still leads and hybrids surge
The Driven
After a very slow start to EV sales in January 2025, the Australian EV market has shown another month of stagnant sales, with electric vehicles making up just 5.9 per cent of the country’s total new car market, which was also subdued.
The latest data from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) (released on Wednesday) and the Electric Vehicle Council (EVC – released on Tuesday) shows that a total of 5,684 full battery electric vehicles were sold in Australia in February, compared to 10,111 in the same month last year, when Tesla dominated and accounted for 5,665 units.
A total of 96,710 new vehicles were sold in Australia during the month, itself a fall of nearly 10 per cent from the same month a year ago.
Faced with these numbers Shaun Westcott said: “There is nothing we can do to force them to buy those vehicles.”
With typical gaslighting style, the “government spokeswoman said the NVES was providing Australians with “choices”.” While they take away the one choice Australians really want which is cheap large fossil fuel comfortable cars.
On the lowest population density country on Earth, with extreme heat, and no transmission lines in most of the country, let alone chargers, this is a dumb place to demand EV’s.
When Australians figure out this communist witchcraft, they are going to be livid.
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*Australian Labor didn’t come up with the idea, they stole it from the Democrats in the US who set up this up long ago.