Littleproud: "And if you put a tonne on the back of an electric ute at the moment, you don’t get far."
For how may utes would a 1100 kg payload (counting the driver) be legal? The popular Toyota Hilux has a quoted payload of 470 kg. I dare say anybody who regularly carts a tonne of manly rocks can find a heavy-duty ute for the purpose. Such customers are rare. The general answer to anti-EV macho Oz outback FUD is the same as that to the American version, complaining that an EV can't tow a boat across the Rockies: one, you do not actually plan to do this; two, in the remote contingency that you ever did need to, hire something. It's much cheaper to buy a vehicle that fits 95% of your daily needs and hire one for special circumstances.
In the 1970s my father was able to tow a 14 foot tinny, loaded with all the holiday packing we couldn't fit in the car (i.e. a lot of it) with a VG Valiant powered by a bottom of the range 3.5 litre engine. Of course a VG Valiant would not represent 2024 best practice in field economy or emissions reduction.
Couldn't the government just impose a tax per unit of CO2 emitted at the distributer level? Revenue could be rebated at a flat rate to all purchasers. I don't see the US system as anything to be emulated.
Littleproud: "And if you put a tonne on the back of an electric ute at the moment, you don’t get far."
For how may utes would a 1100 kg payload (counting the driver) be legal? The popular Toyota Hilux has a quoted payload of 470 kg. I dare say anybody who regularly carts a tonne of manly rocks can find a heavy-duty ute for the purpose. Such customers are rare. The general answer to anti-EV macho Oz outback FUD is the same as that to the American version, complaining that an EV can't tow a boat across the Rockies: one, you do not actually plan to do this; two, in the remote contingency that you ever did need to, hire something. It's much cheaper to buy a vehicle that fits 95% of your daily needs and hire one for special circumstances.
Photo of a Toyota ute and discerning customers. https://www.unav.edu/documents/10174/16849987/toyota-blog-2.jpg
In the 1970s my father was able to tow a 14 foot tinny, loaded with all the holiday packing we couldn't fit in the car (i.e. a lot of it) with a VG Valiant powered by a bottom of the range 3.5 litre engine. Of course a VG Valiant would not represent 2024 best practice in field economy or emissions reduction.
Couldn't the government just impose a tax per unit of CO2 emitted at the distributer level? Revenue could be rebated at a flat rate to all purchasers. I don't see the US system as anything to be emulated.
An emissions trading scheme for car emissions. It is neat. And yes, high emissions vehicles will be more expensive as is desired.