Fact-checking The Australia Institute's EV Mythbusting

The Australia Institute has been very vocally opposed to Victoria's EV tax, and recently put out a video called Electric Vehicle Myths Busted with Dan Bleakley from Coal Miners Driving Teslas. While the video does a good job of calling out some of the myths that right-wing politicians and culture warriors have been circulating for years, it also repeats some of the myths TAI have been perpetuating throughout the EV tax debate - so I thought I'd quickly run through it and fact-check them. As I've said before, EVs are much better than ICE vehicles - but they're no silver bullet. 

Audrey Quicke & Richie Merzian from The Australia Institute

Myth: Electric vehicles don't pay their fair share in road maintenance, so we should tax them to make up for it.

TAI response: They do pay their fair share, because they're more expensive and pay more in GST and luxury vehicle taxes. The taxes associated with cars aren't hypothecated into a road maintenance bucket, they go into consolidated revenue with income tax and everything else, and "long ago that stopped paying for roads". 

This is relevant now because states are introducing per-km EV taxes, which will "punish EV drivers" and "lower EV uptake". 

The taxes associated with cars aren't sufficient to cover spending on roads; if we wanted to do this, we'd be taxing heavy vehicles, because they do the most damage to roads. 

Fact check: This is really spectacular spin and misdirection from TAI. 

One key overarching problem is that they've focused narrowly on maintenance of existing roads, without considering any of the other externalities caused by cars - including pressure to build new roads or widen existing ones, obesity, road trauma, traffic congestion, and so on. Which, to be fair to them, does broadly reflect the line of argument governments have publicly used as justification - but an organisation like TAI which deals a lot with taxing externalities would know it's an oversimplification, and if they were making any attempt at a fair and balanced assessment of the policy, they would take these other externalities into consideration. 

The whole "GST and luxury vehicle tax" thing is misleading on two counts. Firstly, it only applies to the initial vehicle purchase, not how much you actually drive the car like fuel excise does, so it doesn't put a price signal on driving in the same way. Secondly, it will only be true as long as EVs are mostly very expensive, which as they discuss in a later myth, won't be the case for very long, as more affordable models become available. 

It's very unlikely that the small Road User Charge will deter people from buying EVs. As Merzian himself lets slip later in the video, the evidence shows that the biggest barrier is the initial purchase price; and EVs are still dramatically cheaper than ICEVs to run, even with a small RUC. 

It's totally true that taxes associated with cars aren't sufficient to cover spending on roads...but surely they realise that's not a good thing, right? The extra funding is a massive subsidy for driving, which is not only currently a fossil fuel subsidy, but also an ongoing subsidy for urban sprawl and traffic congestion and obesity and all those other things - we should be correcting this distortion ASAP. 

It's also totally true that heavy vehicles do exponentially more damage to roads than cars do - but cars still cause the majority of traffic congestion and pressure to expand the road network, so we should still be taxing them at least a bit, it's just that we should be taxing heavy vehicles a lot more. 

Albany Wind Farm (via Lawrence Murray)

Myth: The electricity grid can't cope with more electric vehicles.

TAI response: It's not entirely off the mark; electrifying our cars will massively increase demand for electricity, but we can scale up the supply of electricity to cope with it. Other jurisdictions are doing it, we can too. 

Fact check: Yep, totally true - we can definitely scale up our grid to cope with EVs. 

I do think it's worth pointing out that scaling up the supply of electricity to cope with EVs and other electrification projects, while at the same time trying to close down dirty emissions-intensive generation like coal plants, will be a challenging task to complete in a short time. This is one reason it makes more sense to prioritise cycling and public transport over cars in our decarbonisation of transport - one electric train or bus can move many people, so it's more efficient on a person-km per kWh basis than an EV; eBikes use tiny amounts of electricity, and of course human-powered bikes use none. 

They're certainly correct in saying that there's no reason our grid can't cope with EVs - it's just that the task becomes easier if we're prioritising more efficient modes. 

Fast chargers (orange) are clustered around east-coast population centres (via PlugShare)

Myth: Australia is too big for EVs, there's not enough charging infrastructure.

TAI response: That's not true, Dan Bleakley drove from Mackay to Canberra the other day. 

Fact check: I find this really frustrating, because the myth is bullshit but they haven't provided a particularly strong response to it. 

Dan's route along the east coast is among the best-served parts of the country for fast-charging infrastructure; once you start getting further from the east coast, the network thins out a lot. So if you regularly drive long distances through the hinterland of Queensland, you genuinely don't have many options, and I don't think it does us any favours to mock people who have noticed this. I think the most relevant points to make here are:

 - this is changing, and the network's getting more comprehensive every day;

 - the majority of Australia's population lives in the places that are well-served; and

 - most people will do most charges at home overnight, not at these public fast-chargers. 

Australia is a very urbanised country, and something like 50% of our car trips are less than 2.5km, while 95% are less than 50km. When it comes to everyday trips, we mostly drive to the local shops, the train station, a nearby workplace - or at most, from the suburbs into the city. Except for taking a longer road trip a few times a year, range doesn't even come close to being an issue for most Australians. The vast majority of us could buy an EV, charge it at home overnight, and not have to worry about range at all. 

For the ones that do regularly drive longer distances - by all means wait till the charging infrastructure is more comprehensive and the range of the vehicles increases. But that won't take that long, and there's nothing stopping the rest of us in the meantime. 

Chemetall Foote lithium mine (via PDTillman)

Myth: Since most of Australia's electricity comes from coal, EVs are just as dirty as fossil fuelled models. 

TAI response: That's not true, even in Victoria where electricity is the dirtiest. Because the electric motor is more efficient than internal combustion, even on a dirty grid it's about 30% of the emissions per kilometre. 

Also, our grid is getting cleaner all the time, and in any case, ~60% of EV drivers already charge from rooftop solar. 

Fact check: It's definitely true that operating an EV is less emissions-intensive than operating an ICEV, even on a dirty grid like Victoria's, that it's getting cleaner every year, and that many EV owners already charge from solar. 

However, the emissions involved in mining the raw materials and then building the car are still fairly substantial - again it's getting cleaner all the time, but it's currently not much different to an equivalent ICEV. And the initial build represents about half the lifetime emissions of an ICEV - so this isn't a minor quibble, it's pretty significant. 

So EVs are definitely less emissions-intensive than ICEVs, even using coal-fired electricity - but when you look at the vehicle's whole life cycle, the margin is less than they indicate here. 

Camping in a Tesla (via anisoboy)

Myth: EVs will ruin the weekend 

TAI response: Dan has driven all over the place in his EV, they're faster, they handle well, they can tow caravans and boats (and even planes). 

Also, they don't produce diesel particulates, and they're quieter, so they make it more pleasant to live near highways. 

Fact check: The response to the actual myth is 100% true - EVs are buckets of fun and they can do all the towing and camping stuff you can do with an ICEV. Despite the credulity with which this claim was received by many people when Scott Morrison made it last election, it's such obvious bullshit I won't bother going point by point. 

But the next little tangent about particulate and noise pollution is much less true. It's true that EVs don't produce diesel particulates or carbon monoxide, but he neglected to mention that they do produce other particulates from their tyres, the road surface, and their brakes. 

More importantly, though, the idea that they'd eliminate noise pollution for people who live near highways is outright false. EVs are much quieter at speeds below ~50km/h, at which point an ICEV's engine is making most of the noise; but at higher speeds (like those you'd find on an urban highway) it's mostly road noise, which is exactly the same for EVs as it is for ICEVs. 

If we actually want to make cities quieter and more pleasant, reducing car use and lowering car speeds is the way to do it. 

Quicke and Merzian in the Tesla with Dan Bleakley

Myth: EVs are just for rich people, affordable models don't exist. 

TAI response: They are currently more expensive, but they will become cheaper as the market grows, and are expected to reach price parity towards the end of the 2020s. 

Also, there are cheaper models, they're just not available in Australia. This is mostly because government policies aren't creating the right conditions here, as they do in Europe - mostly generous subsidies. And that higher sticker price is "what mainly determines whether you purchase it or not". 

Fact check: It's true that they are currently more expensive, it's true they will become cheaper soon, and it's true that cheaper models exist elsewhere. 

It's also true that we aren't getting the range that other countries are getting because our government policies aren't supportive of the transition, but they're only telling half the story here. Yes, those European countries often have EV purchase subsidies and other measures to use as a carrot for encouraging people to buy EVs - but they also employ a bunch of policy sticks to discourage the sale of dirtier models. Australia's emissions standards for our ICE vehicles are woefully inadequate compared to places like Europe, so we've become a dumping ground for the worst of the worst that the manufacturers can't sell as easily elsewhere. It can't be all about subsidies - we need to improve those emissions standards as well. 

Merzian also gives the game away by letting slip that the high sticker price is what determines people's purchase decisions, not the very slight amount that the RUC would increase running costs, as he claimed at the start of the video. 

The higher sticker price of EVs is the big barrier to uptake (via WheelsJoint)

The video closes with a discussion about how EVs are cheaper to fuel and maintain, and how if we could lower the purchase price it would reduce the cost of living for many people. This is yet another example of EVs being better than ICEVs, but far from the best solution. Even a "cheap" car is expensive to buy, register, maintain, and store, compared to riding your bike or taking public transport. 

The best way to reduce people's transport costs is to make it so they don't need to own a car at all - invest in public transport, invest in safe cycling infrastructure, and even provide subsidies for eBikes. Which, funnily enough, is also the best way to reduce our transport emissions.