Tesla announced it had quit the FCAI on Thursday and Polestar followed it up on Friday, saying the FCAI campaign – driven largely by Japanese car makers led by Toyota – is intolerable.
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Tesla and now Polestar’s announcement that they intend to leave the FCAI adds to mounting pressure on CEO Tony Webber who last month came under fire for threatening to run a 2010 anti mining tax style fear campaign against the government’s New Vehicle Efficiency Standard.
The fossil car lobby group CEO claimed that the NVES would cost the entire car-buying public $38 billion in the first five years, which led to the AFR running a story titled “Labor’s new EV-boosting rules will cost $38b, auto group says” followed by Coalition leader Peter Dutton and Nationals Senator Matt Canavan parroting claims that the NVES would see the price of popular vehicles increase by up to $25,000. Claims that have been widely rejected including by the Electric Vehicle Council.
Oh, man. Both sides of this argument are so disingenuous.
The “traditional” car makers are being sooks, because they’ve clearly been asleep at the wheel (hah!) and steadfastly refused to make reasonable progress on emissions reduction, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that we’re killing our planet.
On the other hand, the EV car makers stand to make the most money from the new scheme, with much of it arguably coming from a new revenue stream of them being able to sell the first group their emissions credits. Let’s ignore the fact for a moment that, here in Australia, much of the power that charges these EVs comes from burning coal.
This is on the Australia government, particularly those fucked-up Libs with their noses firmly planted up big business’ collective arse, for not taking meaningful action much sooner.
Important note: I’m not a green warrior by any stretch, and I drive a regular ICE car. I’m just fed up with all the finger-pointing and blame-shifting for an issue that threatens us globally.