For Australia to get moving on electric vehicles, we must ban petrol and diesel cars by 2035

The mistake Brussels policymakers made was to move to ban fossil fuel cars without laying out clear transition pathways. When bans like this are proposed, powerful interests invested in the status quo will look for ways to weaken them.

Ensuring these phase-outs work depends on preventing backsliding through safeguards such as clear interim targets to track progress, flexible review mechanisms, protections against loopholes, and support for equity and infrastructure.

Politics and industry pressure

Any move to ban or restrict a product will meet resistance. When the federal government rolled out its new vehicle efficiency standard, it met strong pushback – even though the standards have no binding sales targets or bans but rather set targets for exhaust emissions from new vehicles.

The federal minister Chris Bowen has repeatedly emphasised that the transition must rely on levers such as efficiency standards, incentives and infrastructure rather than bans.

Bowen has stated Australia “cannot wish away fossil fuels” and dismissed earlier proposals to ban new combustion engine vehicles. His consistent opposition suggests he views bans as politically risky.

Any such ban would probably be seized on by the opposition and even government MPs in car-dependent regional and outer metropolitan areas.

Car dealers and industry lobby groups focused on legacy combustion engine cars are likely to oppose any legislation speeding up the shift to EVs. But EV makers and charging companies would hail the ban.

Rising EV sales show the community is increasingly supportive. But affordability, range of models and charger reliability remain concerns.

How to build a ban

Any such ban in Australia would have to be legislated or regulated, not aspirational. It would have to come with robust targets for EV uptake and infrastructure expansion offering certainty to manufacturers and markets.

It would have to be paired with steadily tightening fuel-efficiency standards and incentives, as well as fair road pricing and registration reforms to ensure equity.

The charging infrastructure rollout would have to be scaled up aggressively and with particular focus on filling in gaps in rural, regional and remote areas.

Any ban would have to be equitable. This would mean extra support for lower-income and rural households, pragmatic trade-in schemes, and measures to preserve used-vehicle markets so people who can’t yet afford new EVs still have access to affordable transport.

Importantly, the policy must guard against backsliding by limiting loopholes, undertaking regular reviews and building in transparency mechanisms.

The car industry will need transition support such as workforce reskilling and incentives for local manufacturing to support the EV industry.

Any ban should be part of a wider strategy focused on ending subsidies and incentives for fossil fuel vehicles and potentially creating a cost-neutral “feebate” scheme, where levies on buyers of new high-emissions vehicles are used to offer rebates for zero or low-emission vehicles to offset higher prices.

Examples include France’s Bonus-Malus and New Zealand’s Clean Car Discount.

A question of resolve

Banning petrol cars by 2035 isn’t radical – it’s necessary. Voluntary transitions and market forces will be too slow.

Opponents will frame any ban as coercive and unfair. Europe’s experience suggests powerful interest groups will seek to delay or weaken any ban.

A phase-out date cannot be a slogan – it must give certainty and set the direction for the entire transport system.

For car-dependent Australia, a 2035 ban may sound like a tough ask. But without it, transport risks becoming an albatross around our necks. The question now is whether Australia has the discipline to match the ambition.

• Hussein Dia is a professor of transport technology and sustainability at Swinburne University of Technology. This article was originally published in the Conversation