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Even Tesla can’t overcome Australian hostility to electric cars

Apr 14, 2021
AFR

Tesla and the electric-car industry generally thrive in the world’s richest nations. Not so in Australia, where even tractors outsell electric vehicles two to one.

More than four decades after Mel Gibson’s super-charged Ford Falcon roared across the country in Mad Max, the car-loving nation is defying a global shift to electrification. Battery-powered vehicles made up just 0.7 per cent of Australia’s new car sales last year, ...

Australia is a “uniquely hostile market” for EV makers, according to Behyad Jafari, chief executive officer of the Sydney-based Electric Vehicle Council...

Without subsidies, price has become a big obstacle to uptake. Greg Caleo, the Sydney-based head of marketing agency Blue Hat Green, said he’d love an EV – partly to set an example to his daughters – but can’t bring himself to spend almost $80,000 on one. So he’s sticking to his eight-year-old Mercedes. “I’ll drive it into the ground,” Mr Caleo said.

Even Nissan’s little Leaf hatchbacks cost $50,000 in Australia. That’s as much as $16,000 more than the base models of Australia’s top-selling vehicles, the rugged Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger...

While EV sales in Australia may pick up when they cost the same as traditional cars, demand is still projected to be slow. EVs will account for only 18 per cent of new cars in Australia in 2030, ...

With little policy certainty and so few EVs on the roads, Australian owners are left with comparatively few places to power up beyond the heavily populated eastern seaboard. Tasmania and the vast Northern Territory, home to Darwin and Alice Springs, have only a few dozen charging stations in total, the Electric Vehicle Council said in its annual report last year.