Elon Musk’s Tesla says a road-user charge should be imposed on top of the fuel excise to penalise internal combustion engines in a bid to drive more Australian motorists to electric vehicles.
Labor has signalled it will look to introduce a road-user charge. Currently, the petrol excise – which adds about 50c to a litre of petrol – raises money for road upkeep. But there is consensus that this is unsustainable given the rising share of EVs and hybrids on the road.
Tesla also criticised Australia’s electric grid system, saying the piecemeal state-based monopoly had made for a slow, opaque system and that this bureaucracy represented the “primary productivity constraint” for the electrification of passenger vehicles.
“In much of the National Electricity Market, distribution network service providers conduct and manage public charger grid connection works, including transformer upgrades,” Tesla wrote in a submission to a parliamentary inquiry. Establishing a connection for a passenger-vehicle site typically takes between nine and 18 months, often exceeding 12 months. Comparable infrastructure can be deployed up to three times faster in other Asia-Pacific markets.”
The company said that it had been quoted anywhere between $0 and $300,000 for the same transformer depending on the jurisdiction. This delay and the “lack of consistency and transparency” in grid connection works were the “primary hurdle” to passenger vehicle electrification, Tesla said.
“Every week a site remains in a protracted planning stage or within a connection queue prohibits efficient access to charging for substantial sections of the economy, including rideshare, fleets without depot charging access, and apartment dwellers and renters who do not have access to home charging,” it said.
“A single, newspaper-published image of EVs queuing for a charger on a public holiday weekend is enough to deter prospective EV buyers for years, risking a plateau of EV market share.”
The EV giant also said that a future road user charge should apply to all road users and that the fuel excise should not be phased out – instead, it should be kept as a “targeted price signal reflecting the unpriced negative externalities of hydrocarbon combustion”, it said.
“Liquid fuel consumption imposes measurable societal costs that fall outside ordinary pavement degradation, including local air pollution and thereby significant negative health externalities related to respiratory and neurological disease, greenhouse gas emissions, and inflationary effects associated with global oil supply shocks,” Tesla wrote.
“Retaining fuel excise alongside a universal distance charge preserves the critical total-cost-of-ownership advantage that drives consumers toward zero-emission technologies.”
The “pragmatic transition pathway” here would be to apply the road user charge just to new light vehicle registrations so that previously registered combustion engine vehicles would not be captured under the scheme, it said.
Extracted in full from: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/tesla-hit-combustion-engine-cars-twice-roaduser-charge-should-not-replace-fuel-excise/news-story/a3b16bdc76eaaaebaab160daaea9d8ed
