Written by Michael Bloch / SQ Blog / 17 April 2019
Results from two recent polls indicate many Australians are on board with accelerating an electric vehicle revolution across the nation.
Early this month, Labor announced its National Electric Vehicle (EV) policy; elements of which include:
- A national electric vehicle target of 50 per cent of new car sales by 2030.
- A government electric vehicle target of 50 per cent of new purchases and leases of passenger vehicles by 2025.
- Provision of an upfront tax deduction to purchase electric vehicles for business purposes.
- All federally-funded road upgrades to incorporate electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
Labor’s EV policy may have the Coalition frothing at the mouth, but it seems the Coalition is again out of touch with what Australians think – and even Labor may have underestimated the desire for EVs. The interest in electric cars is looking very much like the interest in solar power in the early days, or more recently, solar batteries.
News.com.au reports a YouGov Galaxy online survey of 861 eligible voters taken between April 10 and 11 found 62 per cent of respondents either supported Labor’s EV policy or thought it should go even further. Approximately 68 per cent either own or expect to buy an electric car in the future. Full results of the survey were yet to appear on the YouGov site at the time of publishing.
50% Support 100% EV New Car Sales By 2025
Last week, The Australia Institute (TAI) published results from a poll indicating half of voting Australians support shifting all sales of new vehicles to electric vehicles by 2025, with just 28% opposed.
62% also supported a government-led program to an electrically charged transport system – including 55% of Coalition voters, 71% of Labor voters, 78% Greens voters, and 54% ‘other’ voters. Only 16% of respondents were opposed to this idea.
“Instead of driving Australia backwards by preserving our gas-guzzlers, any future Government should look to the fine example of countries like Norway who already reached 50% of new car registrations as EVs in 2018 by using popular public incentives to accelerate electric vehicle uptake,” said TAI Climate & Energy Program Director Richie Merzian.
Details of how Norway has achieved this can be found in this TAI report.
“Our Nordic Policy Centre report shows with the right policy settings from Government, citizens are more than willing to purchase electric vehicles over a petrol car.”
The Australia Institute survey was conducted with 1,536 people between 20 February 2019 and 4 March 2019.
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