this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
144 points (100.0% liked)

Australia

3582 readers
196 users here now

A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.

Before you post:

If you're posting anything related to:

If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News

Rules

This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:

Banner Photo

Congratulations to @[email protected] who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition

Recommended and Related Communities

Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:

Plus other communities for sport and major cities.

https://aussie.zone/communities

Moderation

Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.

Additionally, we have our instance admins: @[email protected] and @[email protected]

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 27 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If government invested in a renewables program by installing charging stations almost equal to the amount of fuel servos we have, and heavily incentivise electric vehicles we would see a major transition without car manufacturers shoving corruption in our faces and money towards lobby groups.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Unlikely. Car manufacturers don't particularly care how you're going to charge it. That's a you problem not a them problem.

They're resisting because Oz has been a place they can dump polluting cars that are cheap to make. The big markets like EU and California have mandated EVs, if they can delay the cutoff here it buys them time to do the ramp ups they should have been doing for a decade.

Toyota in particular is the worst culprit, they spent a lot of money in the US trying to prevent ICE being banned, because they bet on hydrogen and lost, now they're doing exactly the same delay tactics here.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for the input. I hope I was at least making sense previously even though it was more of a utopian society that we'd probably get to see something like that.

I'm not having kids, but I'd like for the youth of today to grow up in a more eco friendly lifestyle without the need for gas in the future.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You're not wrong that more chargepoints help, it reduces EV resistance and range concerns, and hence helps consumers be willing to buy EVs.

It won't stop legacy ICE lobbying to delay mandatory cutoff on ICE sales.

They (collectively) have $trillions invested in ICE factories and engine designs etc that become valueless when ICE are banned. As VW found out leveraging existing factories is ineffective, you need to build for EV manufacture, which means billions in written off assets and years of delay for legacy auto.

If they can convince any market to delay the ban that's literally dollars in the bank and bonuses in pocket.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Car manufacturers don’t particularly care how you’re going to charge it

Bullshit. Of course manufacturers are concerned about charging networks. If you can't charge their car you won't buy their car.

they bet on hydrogen and lost

How so? Hydrogen hasn't been banned anywhere. There's still a lot of implementation problems but it's a pretty neat tech. There's 3x huge solar projects going ahead in West Aus to crack water and produce hydrogen.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

They are funding charging stations, and the networks are pretty decent now for long trips.

There's still holes that need filled in, especially when you get away from population centres and main roads, but you can drive from Port Douglas in far north Queensland to Adelaide in any new EV.

Adelaide to Perth is currently a no. There's a 2000km stretch with one fast charger. Not impossible, but it means several days of slow charging along the route.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Where's the consumer incentive to go green? The wait time on a hybrid toyota is 2 years. Mazda and Kia both have hybrid or in some cases plugin hybrid of their flagship SUVs, but not available in Aus. A plug in hybrid Outlander costs you 25k ontop of a standard petrol outlander. I WANT to do the right thing, but I'm not given the choice.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

The system is working as intended. Thanks for confirming

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Having recently had an outlander as a hire car overseas I'm amazed that anyone would willing subject themselves to one as a daily driver. What an absolute peice of shit lol. For the money of the flagship PHEV outlander, you could get an EV6 or Tesla model 3.

Anyway the actual green decision is to drive less and use alternatives more. However that's not an option for some.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I drive an old Outlander (10 years old), and rather like it. I mean, it's a basic enough family car. It doesn't do anything fancy. But it doesn't give us any grief, either.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This is how free markets work. Increased demand for certain variants of a product will inflate the price of that product accordingly.

It is worth contemplating that due to some manufacturers complete disregard for the environmental damage from mining Cobalt and Lithium (as well as the societal damage from Conflict Mining), a large EV may be more destructive than a modern ICE vehicle.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

As long as corruption is rewarding, this won't change.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Hopefully the politicians can do the right thing for once rather than being corrupt arseholes. Certainly plenty of previous examples of our pissweak pollies letting "industry" dictate what suits them instead of the public.

I'd like to see average fleet sales emissions ramping to zero by 2030.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Why is ”slightly less bad” the angle were letting either the government or companies argue over for?

We should be demanding massive increases to PT and walkablility with a decrease to car ownership.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's all about the 💸💸💸. I don't even necessarily mean the money states have at their disposal for public transport projects, it's also about the money that rich people with vested interests in seeing more people driving cars quietly slip into the pockets of pollies

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Fears are growing that Australia will continue to be a dumping ground for dirty and inefficient vehicles, as the federal government designs laws to limit the carbon emissions of new cars sold.

And the debate is getting divisive, with Elon Musk's Tesla and the Climate Council even accusing Australia's biggest car lobby of pushing a "loophole" policy that could slow the transition.

The vast majority supported the general premise of the standards, including submissions by Tesla, the Climate Council, Toyota, Hyundai, and Australia's biggest car manufacturer lobby group, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI).

InfluenceMap's program manager Ben Youriev told ABC News that the FCAI has led a "strategic" and "negative" campaign against climate policy.

"We're focusing on getting the design of the fuel efficiency standards right," the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen recently told the ABC's Q+A program.

The federal government's expected to announce a clearer policy position on its looming fuel efficiency laws by the end of the year.


The original article contains 1,116 words, the summary contains 158 words. Saved 86%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Name and shame ?