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Electric cars?

Would you buy an electric car?

  • Already own one

    Votes: 10 5.1%

  • Yes - would definitely buy

    Votes: 43 21.7%

  • Yes - preferred over petrol car if price/power/convenience similar

    Votes: 78 39.4%

  • Maybe - preference for neither, only concerned with costs etc

    Votes: 38 19.2%

  • No - prefer petrol car even if electric car has same price, power and convenience

    Votes: 25 12.6%

  • No - would never buy one

    Votes: 14 7.1%
  • Total voters
    198
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JohnDe said:
? I hope that you are better at investing than you are at accusations and fact finding.

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Federal subsidies, tax breaks and the like are presently not needed because it's near impossible to buy a BEV that you can drive away. Wait times for delivery of 3 to 6 months are a good outcome and in some cases - as in Kia's Award winning EV6 - you cannot even use their buying portal because they don't know when next availability will be. Talk to anyone who tried unsuccessfully (like my neighbour) to buy one of the 240 of Hyundai's Ionic 5 when they became available for online purchase last year about how hard it still is to get one. Anyone who put a deposit on Tesla's Cybertruck has to wait until 2030.

On the other hand, any subsidies or tax breaks that could be offered would be offset by the safety and health benefits which were quantified earlier in this thread. So while in the short term incentives are not needed, there nevertheless is a good case for offering them when availability improves. There is also the significant contribution that BEVs will make towards getting to our CO2 emissions target:
 

Let's face it, the big manufacturers are going to supply the big markets first.

Unless we make them here, or place large orders like for corporate or government fleets, they just won't be available in decent numbers.
 
SirRumpole said:
Let's face it, the big manufacturers are going to supply the big markets first.

Unless we make them here, or place large orders like for corporate or government fleets, they just won't be available in decent numbers.
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Not that simple.

The 'big manufacturers' don't have anywhere near the capacity to even supply their local markets. They are trying to maintain public and media interest by releasing small batches in majority of markets.

Traditional vehicle factories are set up for ICEV production, major upgrades are required, new machinery is required. Until they get dedicated EV production lines sorted, and sufficient battery supply, the 'big manufacturers' are going to struggle to produce EVs in decent numbers.

Tesla went through the factory issue when they took over the old GM/Toyota factory and converted it. They learnt from that and then built their China factory, followed by Texas and Berlin.

That is why Tesla has a 5 year jump on the industry.
 
SirRumpole said:
Let's face it, the big manufacturers are going to supply the big markets first.

Unless we make them here, or place large orders like for corporate or government fleets, they just won't be available in decent numbers.
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China is the biggest manufacturing region and the biggest market.
They generally make cars much smaller than American's want so their vehicles are ideally suited to most of nations which drive on the LHS - with a total population near 2 billion - as per below:

Chinese exports are also increasing and locally based companies are buying more and larger car carriers to meet this demand, so landed vehicles will increase in number and decrease slightly in cost.
As we don't make any cars in Australia, sea transport costs are going to be the same whether or not they are NEVs or ICEVs, as the lifetime costs of ownership for EVs is already substantially lower than for equivalent ICEVs. I will definitely be buying a BEV later this year, and am just waiting for a few more models to arrive.
 

The bottom line remains the same, don't expect an increase in supply in Australia anytime soon...
 
SirRumpole said:
The bottom line remains the same, don't expect an increase in supply in Australia anytime soon...
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Nothing large but EV supply has been increasing each year and will continue to increase. Just look at the Tesla sales numbers.

Let's face it, the big manufacturers are going to supply the big markets first.

Unless we make them here, or place large orders like for corporate or government fleets, they just won't be available in decent numbers.
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Australia recorded 20,665 EV sales in 2021, a significant increase from the 6,900 sold in 2020, which means electric cars now make up 1.95% of the new car market. The Tesla Model 3 was the bestselling electric car in Australia, with 12,094 vehicles sold last year – accounting for 58.5% of all EVs sold. 31 Jan 2022​

New electric vehicle sales triple in Australia with Tesla outstripping other makers

US company’s Model 3 makes up more than half the electric cars sold in Australia in 2021, as EV market share grows to 1.95%
www.theguardian.com
 
The thing with subsidies, is everyone wants them all industries all competing for free money to help their bottom line, the down side to it is that it isn't free money, it has to be paid for from taxes the Government gets its money from taxes.
So for every industry or every item that gets a subsidy, either some other sector loses some funding, or someone else has to pay more tax.

That's why I think subsidies have to be very focused and not just dished out willy nilly, when you think about the amount of susidies over the last couple of years, it is mid boggling subsidies for tests, vaccines, doubling the dole, paying jobkeeper and long standing subsidies e.g solar installations, green initiatives in hydrogen, diesel fuel subsidies, prescription subsidies etc eventually the books have to balance.

There is always something that should be subsidised, but it is like most things, there should be two lists the need to be subsidised list and the it would be nice if it was subsidised list.

With E.V's the infrastructure to charge the E.V's will need to be subsidised IMO, as the return on capital will be low, but the need of the public for widespread charging station rollout will be high, so the Governments will have to subsidise it as the Feds and the States are already doing.

The need for people to be given $10k to buy an electric car, just because they are dearer, just doesn't pass the pub test IMO.
Maybe if the purchaser had to sign an agreement with the Government, that their car can be used as a grid connected at call storage facility, something could be done, as then the Government is getting something in return from the subsidy.
But that is already being offered by companies like AGL, where you can lease a E.V through them, they supply the car and the electricity and use the storage.
 

Subsidies would be ok as long as some money was returned to the taxpayer.

Instead of giving money to car companies to stay in Oz, we should have bought their production lines and leased them them back.

That way we would have had some assets instead of nothing.

Those production lines could now be producing EV's.
 
SirRumpole said:
As I said, we are a small market far away.
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We are also an affluent market, so the margin per car will be much greater than for the average Chinese person buying an NEV. Thus, Chinese manufacturers will target western markets whenever they can.

The other point is that irrespective of our market size, new vehicle purchase numbers are robust on an annual basis - typically about a million per year - and all of these are imported. The problem we have had is that other markets are offering incentives so we are at the back of the line from the legacy automakers, but not the Chinese, who just need to revamp their production lines for right hand drives, which isn't a problem as they have the Japanese and Indonesian markets across the waters and Thailand across the border.
 
The taxation argument is a big con as was proven by JobKeeper which had no trouble dishing out hundreds of billions of dollars, and then not even bothering to claw back billions in overpayments.
Incentivising new and better products is smart and in the national interest. Lots of options how are in this thread.
As were the data on long term savings that could be attributed back to EVs from health and safety improvements.
What is not smart are the piecemeal and variable offerings from State governments that should have been addressed by a strong COAG. However with an incompetent federal government that prefers to wave lumps of coal in Parliament that was never going to happen.
 
SirRumpole said:
Let's face it, the big manufacturers are going to supply the big markets first.

Unless we make them here, or place large orders like for corporate or government fleets, they just won't be available in decent numbers.
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Tesla is going to be building another factory in Shanghai, which will double production from 1Million cars to 2Million cars per year.

Currently Tesla supplies Australia with the model 3 from China, so that’s good news for Aussie supply.

2022 is going to be a big year for Tesla, their two existing factories are running at full steam, while the two new factories in Texas and Berlin are just about to start delivering cars, Shanghai to break ground on a second factory there.

not to mention as soon as they can get to it Semi truck and cyber truck will go into production some time in the not to distant future.

 
The big problem with building cars in Australia is still here, it isn't a big enough market, when we only buy 1million cars a year and that is across every make of vehicle, it just isn't viable on scale.
Toyota alone sells 10.5million cars a year, Holden in a good year sold less than 200,000 cars, you can't make money with that volume. Especially when peoples taste constantly change and you have to keep re tooling to keep pace with the change, it all sounds great and patriotic, but people will buy what they perceive as the best value for money or best looking, people weren't buying Australian cars they were buying Japanese or Korean cars.
It was only a matter of time that Australia's car industry would go when tariffs on imports were removed, the only thing that kept it going was the Australian Government paying General Motors U.S and Ford U.S money to keep them open.
Mitsubishi bailed out years earlier.

 
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rederob said:
The taxation argument is a big con as was proven by JobKeeper which had no trouble dishing out hundreds of billions of dollars, and then not even bothering to claw back billions in overpayments.
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Well that is good to know, if taxation is a con, then there should be no reason for the next Government, to be trying to pay down the debt.
That will work well.
Would I personally like a subsidy on an E.V, absolutely, would it make me buy one over an ICE vehicle, no because I would buy one anyway. It would just make it cheaper for me, or allow me to buy a higher standard of luxury.
So should I get a subsidy?
 
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I agree, take Teslas plan to build a new factory in shanghai for example.

might makes sense to build the factory in China and export 20% of the out put into Australia/NZ, and sell the other 80% in China, rather than build the factory here and export 80% of the out put into China, keeping only 20% here.

the 20/80 (it’s probably more like 5/95) ratio alone makes it more efficient to have the factory in China, but when you factor in all the other savings of building cars in China rather than Australia, it just doesn’t make sense.

but there are businesses that do make sense to have here, if we focus on them Australia will do great.
 
sptrawler said:
Well that is good to know, if taxation is a con, then there should be no reason for the next Government, to be trying to pay down the debt.
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I said your "taxation argument" was a con.
Petty incentives do little to unbalance the books, unlike the hundreds of billions that were spent on covid relief.
sptrawler said:
Would I personally like a subsidy on an E.V, absolutely, would it make me buy one over an ICE vehicle, no because I would buy one anyway.
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If you check the incentive arrangements I proposed as options then there was nothing that would help anyone get into a high end NEV.
However, the largest State incentives at present are offered by NSW and do as you said, with it being available for cars up to $68750.
I proposed caps and progressive incentives that would cut out at the average price of a new car. In fact there are many things that could be done to only target those on wages/salary earning (or on an income) at the average salary level or less.
Too many people think that you have to throw a large lump sum at prospective buyers when there is instead a range of other incentives that could be packaged.

However, without harmonisation arrangements between States/Territories we will find people manipulating their addresses to get the best deal.
 
Absolutely spot on IMO @Value Collector . cars take up a lot of volumetric shipping space.
Same sort of logic applies with subsidies IMO, at the moment it makes a lot more sense, to subsidies the charging network and spend the money on updating the transmission network to cope with mass up take of E.V's.

Rather than subsidising the purchase price of the car to increase the number, which will add more load onto the infrastructure, that you are trying to get ready to facilitate more E.V's it is a bit cart before the horse to me.

Poor people don't buy $50k cars, so giving them a $5k subsidy is meaningless, you would be far better off paying out their electricity arrears bill and installing a free heat pump HWS to replace their gas or element HWS.
Poor people will buy second hand E.V's, as they have bought second hand ICE vehicles, that's life for people with little money I've been there done that.
 
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rederob said:
I said your "taxation argument" was a con.
Petty incentives do little to unbalance the books, unlike the hundreds of billions that were spent on covid relief.
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Governments of all persuasions, blow money in times of financial crisis, it happened in the GFC and the covid, both blew money and were rorted.
That is what happens, whether the cost of pursuing the rorters is worth the cost who knows? It is definitely easier to chase the individual taxpayer, as they don't have the resources to defend themselves.
But that is a side issue whether they are rorting jobkeeper, claiming non installed pink batts, or supplying not fit for purpose school buildings. That will always be the case and why there are always papers full of fraud cases.
Like I said we are talking about whether it is sensible, at this point in time, to be subsidising the cost of an E.V .


IMO there will in the future be a point in time when it will make perfect sense to encourage the take up of E.V's, I just don't think it is at the moment, like I've already said at this point in time I think it is more important to have the infrastructure installed, not have rows of people lined up to use it or have electrical distribution issue where the charging network is compromised.
I would rather see 10x 100Kw fast chargers everywhere, than2x 50Kw and lower because the electrical supply can't support it.
At present in W.A they are mostly 2x50Kw, that takes twice as long to charge as a 100Kw charger, so how many peaved people are you going to have waiting for you to come back from your 1 hour pee and meal break?
Like I said, it is putting the cart before the horse, subsidising the vehicle, before you have the infrastructure set up to cope with them.
Maybe in a year or two's time o.k, at the moment no way, it would be a disaster IMO.
 
sptrawler said:
Like I said we are talking about whether it is sensible, at this point in time, to be subsidising the cost of an E.V .
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Is forgoing NEV taxes the same as a subsidy?
It's a bit semantic, but many taxes are discretionary and put in place for a specific purpose. Given NEVs are a benefit to society it makes sense to make them more affordable, But you do not need to pay a subsidy when you can instead keep the purchase price down.
The point I made about targeting grants or rebates to lower income earners is that this cohort will save on fuel costs, but spend those savings on items that attract GST, and they will do that for years to come.
You and I are mostly on the same page on EVs so I am just trying to flesh out counterpoints.
While it's true there are too few EVs presently available to put on the streets, that is not necessarily an argument for not incentivising purchases now.
First, I know that in my situation I will only ever need to use an external charging source if I head to relatives in NSW, but even then I could recharge overnight to return. Tesla owners are a different ball game: they have a purpose built network to rely on, and therefore make their purchase decision with a view that long trips will not pose a problem.
Second, people were buying Teslas in the early days when its charging network was is in its infancy. That did not put off buyers, probably because like most people they would only need to recharge their vehicles once a week at most for most of the year. And that's where Australia is now. That what the data shows!
Finally, in 3 years time at most the only people buying ICEVs will be those who were unable to pre-order a NEV, so there will be no need for incentives. Some might think I am guessing, but look at what happened in Norway, and is happening in Germany and China with NEV takeup. Everything about NEVs will be so much better by then, and comparatively cheaper, as NEV supply chains continue to mature. Thus, incentivisation should be a first step rather than a second one when there's a mad scramble irrespective of anything else.
 
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