Well, here come the taxes. I put this point up over a year ago when people were saying how cheap the car will be to run.
Infrastructure Partnerships Australia has stunned the nascent electric vehicle industry in Australia by suggesting that EVs be immediately hit with a road user charge, and has modelled a fee of 4c a kilometre, or about $800 a year based on 20,000kms travelled.
The proposal in a new report released on Thursday – just a day before a key meeting of state and federal transport ministers – suggests that fuel excise revenue – which currently gathers around $11.3 billion a year – could “fall off a cliff’ if the uptake of EVs suddenly accelerates from its current low levels.
The lobby group wants the road user charge targeted exclusively at full battery electric vehicles, but not plug in hybrids or other fuel efficient cars, or any car that has an internal combustion engine.
And the new tax should be introduced now, says IPA chief executive Adrian Dwyer, “before there is an electric car in every driveway.”
