While Norway is on track for 100% of all new cars sales to be electric vehicles early next year.
Australia is languishing near the bottom of the OECD league table with just 0.6% of new cars being electric.
Apart from all the obvious problems this will bring with trying to reach emissions targets that we should have it also leaves Australia highly vulnerable to disruption of our imported fuel.
Incredibly, Australia currently has just three weeks of fuel in reserve!
While the government prepares to spend over $140 billion on nuclear submarines to defend Australia in the 2040’s, it seems to have no problem leaving the country totally exposed to an oil blockade now.
The Democrats support tax and subsidy measures to increase the uptake of electric vehicles and improve Australia’s fuel security and speed up the rollout of charging stations.
References
- Our Climate Action plan
- Our Self Defence plan
- Our Transport plan
- Norway to hit 100 per cent electric vehicle sales early next year (Drive)
- Electric Car Sales 2020 (Budget Direct)
- Fact check: Does Australia have 3 weeks of petrol in reserve? (ABC)
- ‘Among the worst in OECD’: Australia’s addiction to cheap, dirty petrol (Guardian)
- State if EV’s in Australia (PDF, Electric Vehicle Council)
- Australia’s nuclear submarine decision leaves more questions than answers (Marcus Hellyer, ASPI)