A TAX ON ELECTRIC VEHICLES - HAVE THE VICTORIAN AND SOUTH AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENTS TAKEN LEAVE OF THE SENSES - IF THEY EVER HAD ANY TO START WITH?

>Treasurer's proposal is unfair on several levels

23 November 2020

ELECTRIC VEHICLE TAX

Treasurer’s proposal is unfair on several levels

ll road users should pay for the roads they use and it is appropriate for electric vehicle (EV) owners to pay their fair share. However, the proposed EV road tax is unfair on several levels (‘‘Pallas zaps electric cars with road charges’’, 22/11).

It fails to account for the benefits of EVs to society, such as reduced health costs attributable to pollution-related illness and costs of mitigation of the effects of climate change. It beggars belief that a state that has just endured a climate emergency-related catastrophe would decide to introduce legislation that would increase the risk. It ignores the fact that the fossil-fuel energy is already subsided to the tune of $1480 for every Australian per year.

It will mean that Victoria will be one of the few places in the world with not only minimal EV incentives but actual disincentives. Without adequate incentives to buy EVs and without stringent fuel efficiency standards, Australia has become a dumping ground for car manufacturers’ least fuel efficient, most polluting models. An EV road tax will only exacerbate this problem.

It would be far better to develop a more equitable system that ensures that all road users pay their fair share, not only of the cost of building and maintaining roads, but of the cost to society based on their choice of vehicle. Michael Fink, Donvale

A mind-boggling decision

For a government with ambition to tackle pollution and climate change, Tim Pallas’ decision to follow South Australia’s questionable lead and tax electric cars is mind boggling.

Why would you tax the one form of transport technology that can produce zero emissions? The ACT has said it will offer zero interest loans, stamp duty exemptions and two years of free registration for EV buyers, yet in Victoria we plan to place a new tax on not polluting?

Nowhere else in the world (not even Donald Trump’s America) are EVs the subject of a special tax. Our failure to encourage the uptake of EVs means we will be the dumping ground for old polluting cars while manufacturers send their new and cheaper EVs to more welcoming shores. Mr Pallas needs to reconsider this damaging proposal before budget night.

Guy Abrahams, Richmond

We need leaders, not dinosaurs

So Tim Pallas thinks drivers that are not filling up their vehicles with petrol are not paying their way . This would have to go down as one of the most short-sighted political statements in recent memory, perhaps to be quoted in the future as one of the prime examples of misguided policy as climate change stares us in the face.

Drivers of petrol cars (me included) are not paying our share of the costs associated with the emissions they produce. I guess for a short time earlier this decade we were, but Tony Abbott saw that idea off. Sure, electric vehicles can indirectly produce emissions because of the generation source, but because of the high efficiency of electric motors, even a car run on coal-fired power is less polluting than a petrol one. A properly constructed price on carbon-based fuels would account for this.

Australia is set to become the dumping ground for vehicles that car manufacturers cannot sell in advanced markets. Take a look at Volkswagen’s websites for European countries for example – the new electric range is promoted front and centre. Boris Johnson (Conservative, UK) would think the Victorian government is “bonkers”.

We need leaders, not dinosaurs.

Alex Judd, Blackburn North

Compromising a good record

The Andrews government’s move to slap a new tax on electric vehicles is bizarre. While claiming to be a leader on climate action and clean energy, the Victorian Treasurer seems intent on creating barriers to clean technology uptake.

While European countries embrace government incentives for electric vehicles, the Andrews government’s good record on clean energy and climate action is now looking severely compromised.

Nick Roberts, Shepparton

ELECTRIC VEHICLES - AUSTRALIA, AS EVER, HAS LOST THE PLOT!

Early electric car between 1890 and 1915

Electric vehicles have never been popular, certainly at least since the internal combustion engine was developed and oil was found around the world in very large quantities.

The electric vehicles developed in the 19th century were, by today's standards, very basic and with technology which was on the verge of great breakthroughs.

Then main technology which has not allowed electric vehicles to be widely used is the fact that the batteries required to power electric vehicles have not yet had the breakthrough which they require for the vehicles, in general, to become more and more usable and popular.

However, what needs to be included in the equation is the development in the 21st century of vast renewable energy technologies which allows so many households and business establishments to install enough power generation to sustain fleets of electric vehicles or vehicles for city daily driving not requiring vast differences for their daily trips.

There is now sufficient advance in battery development to allow more people in general to be able to commute to and from work, take families daily to destinations not requiring vast travel distance and to be powered and charged at home and/or at work.

Newspapers carry supplements on vehicles of all sorts and these sections of the papers are called "Drive" or "Cars Guides" or names similar to these.

In years gone by there have been the occasional articles about developments in electric vehicles and the technologies used to drive the vehicles, but lately, at least since the beginning of 2014, such articles have all but dried up.

Australian car manufacturing industries are busy grinding to a halt with the last 3 locally manufactured car organisations about to close shop.

Nowhere does there seem to have been any suggestion that electric vehicle manufacture could help sustain at least one of them in Australia.

To add to the woes of vehicle disappearance, one of the few local industries which has had to shut up shop in the last few years was an enterprising organisation which was converting petrol engined cars to electric drive.

One day, particularly at the rate of world consumption as it is in the 21st century, oil supplies will diminish to the extent that vehicles relying on oil to run and maintain them will start running out.

The roads are choked with vehicles and noxious gases and we are all slowly being poisoned by the foul air we are forced to breathe!

Electric vehicles offer clean alternatives with so much in alternative renewable energy sources now available. All that is required is a few far-sighted and wealthy entepreneurs willing to put a few million here and a few million there into developing and installing the technologies for running and maintaining electric vehicles and Australia could be at the forefront of this sort of development.

As I have said in many of my blog posts, don't hold your breath!

If you have read as far as the end of my overheated rave about electric cars, have a look at my web pages and get some idea of what I am talking about:

Electric Vehicles Part 1
Electric Vehicles Part 2
Electric Vehicles Part 3
Electric Vehicles Part 4
Electric Vehicles Part 5

This is an electric van from Renault - circa 2013

ISRAEL IS NOT IMMUNE TO FAILED BUSINESS VENTURES - DESPITE TELLING THE WORLD OTHERWISE!

THis article was on Antony Loewenstein's blog on 27 May 2013:

Israeli electric car company, promoted as progressive, dies

This is a clas­sic case of main­stream jour­nal­ists, so keen to pro­mote Pro­gres­sive and Green Is­rael, shilling for Is­raeli elec­tric cor­po­ra­tion Bet­ter Place. The fact that mem­bers of its board had trou­bling human rights records and it op­er­ated in the oc­cu­pied West Bank was con­ve­niently ig­nored.

Now news that will sad­den no­body ex­cept in­di­vid­u­als who be­lieve that find­ing al­ter­na­tives to fos­sil fuels should not in­volve con­sid­er­ing human rights of Pales­tini­ans (via New York Times):

The vi­sion was am­bi­tious. Bet­ter Place, an elec­tric ve­hi­cle in­fra­struc­ture com­pany, un­veiled plans more than five years ago to pi­o­neer a sys­tem of quick-ser­vice bat­tery swap­ping sta­tions across Is­rael to en­able un­lim­ited travel.

The com­pany’s founder pre­dicted that 100,000 elec­tric cars would be on the roads here by 2010.

But on Sun­day, Bet­ter Place an­nounced that its ven­ture, a flag­ship en­ter­prise of Is­rael’s image as a start-up hub, was com­ing to an end.

Dan Cohen, the com­pany’s third chief ex­ec­u­tive, said in a state­ment that fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties had left the com­pany no op­tion but to file for liq­ui­da­tion in a dis­trict court and to re­quest the ap­point­ment of a pro­vi­sional re­ceiver “to find the best way to min­i­mize the dam­age to its em­ploy­ees, cus­tomers and cred­i­tors.”

The an­nounce­ment fol­lowed a string of set­backs in the emerg­ing elec­tric car mar­ket. Fisker, a car­maker, is in fi­nan­cial dis­tress; A123 Sys­tems, a bat­tery sup­plier for Fisker, and, more re­cently, Coda Hold­ings, an­other car­maker, filed for bank­ruptcy. Tesla, the promi­nent car man­u­fac­turer, has had suc­cess, though, re­pay­ing its gov­ern­ment loan last week after a suc­cess­ful sale of new shares.

Is­rael had been con­sid­ered a per­fect test­ing ground for Bet­ter Place’s green pro­ject, given the coun­try’s small size and high gaso­line prices. The elec­tric car fit into Is­raeli dreams of re­duc­ing oil de­pen­dency; the ini­tia­tive gained the sup­port of the gov­ern­ment and was em­braced by Shi­mon Peres, the pres­i­dent of Is­rael. Pres­i­dent Obama, dur­ing his March visit here, praised the Is­raelis’ in­no­v­a­tive spirit, men­tion­ing elec­tric cars as one of sev­eral ex­am­ples.

Yet the pro­ject was hob­bled by prob­lems and de­lays, and the com­pany’s idea failed to gain trac­tion, with fewer than 1,000 cars on the road in Is­rael and an­other few hun­dred in Den­mark.

Mr. Cohen said on Sun­day that the vi­sion and the model had been right, but that the pace of mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion had not lived up to ex­pec­ta­tions. With­out a large in­jec­tion of cash, he said, Bet­ter Place was un­able to con­tinue its op­er­a­tions.

“This is a very sad day for all of us,” Mr. Cohen added. “The com­pany brought with it a vi­sion that swept along many peo­ple here and around the world.”

About $850 mil­lion in pri­vate cap­i­tal has been in­vested in the com­pany, which has 350 em­ploy­ees in Is­rael. The largest share­holder, with about 30 per­cent of the stock, was the Is­rael Cor­po­ra­tion, a large hold­ing com­pany that fo­cuses on chem­i­cals, en­ergy, ship­ping and trans­porta­tion. The cor­po­ra­tion’s de­ci­sion not to in­vest fur­ther in Bet­ter Place led to the mo­tion for re­ceiver­ship.

The Bet­ter Place model for elec­tric car use emerged from an ef­fort among man­u­fac­tur­ers and sup­pli­ers to es­tab­lish a stan­dard in­fra­struc­ture in the nascent in­dus­try.

Under terms that re­sem­bled a cell­phone plan, sub­scribers to Bet­ter Place bought their cars and paid about $350 a month to lease ac­cess to the bat­ter­ies, swap sta­tions and charge points. But only one car man­u­fac­turer, the French au­tomaker Re­nault, signed on to adapt its Flu­ence Z.E. sedan to en­able bat­tery switch­ing, lim­it­ing the cus­tomers’ choices and the com­pany’s po­ten­tial.

The bat­tery has a range of about 100 miles. For those trav­el­ing longer dis­tances, Bet­ter Place set up a net­work of switch­ing sta­tions where it promised that swap­ping a de­pleted bat­tery for a fully charged one would take about the same time as fill­ing a car with gas, so that range would no longer be an issue.

“It’s not the fu­ture of gas sta­tions; it’s the end of them,” the com­pany Web site boasted.

About three dozen switch­ing sta­tions now dot Is­rael, which is about 260 miles long from north to south, but they often look de­serted.

The com­pany was founded in Palo Alto, Calif., by Shai Agassi, an Is­raeli en­tre­pre­neur who had pre­vi­ously been a top ex­ec­u­tive at SAP, the Ger­man soft­ware com­pany. It then moved from Cal­i­for­nia to Tel Aviv.

In Oc­to­ber, Bet­ter Place said that Mr. Agassi had been suc­ceeded as its chief by Evan Thorn­ley, the com­pany’s top ex­ec­u­tive in Aus­tralia. The com­pany said Mr. Agassi would con­tinue as a board mem­ber and share­holder. Mr. Thorn­ley left after only three months, over dif­fer­ences re­gard­ing the di­rec­tion of the com­pany, ac­cord­ing to Globes , the Is­raeli busi­ness pub­li­ca­tion. He was suc­ceeded by Mr. Cohen.

In Feb­ru­ary, Bet­ter Place an­nounced that it was wind­ing down its op­er­a­tions in North Amer­ica and Aus­tralia to con­cen­trate on its core mar­kets in Den­mark and Is­rael.

Mr. Cohen said on Sun­day that the com­pany would do what it could to con­tinue to serve its cus­tomers and op­er­ate the recharg­ing net­work, until the liq­uida­tor de­cided on a course of ac­tion.