Australia needs more business incentives to switch to EVs

Last month the Electric Vehicle Council released its 2023 State of Electric Vehicles report. Very little of it was devoted to commercial and business use cases for EVs which isn’t surprising. Australia is still finding its footing when it comes to incentivising its citizens to buy an EV, especially compared to many other countries throughout the world.

Some countries have been encouraging EV purchases through discounts, tax breaks and other perks for decades. And it didn’t just pertain to the upfront costs of buying the vehicle.

Taking Norway as an example, there have been incentives in place since 1990. These included:

• No purchase or import taxes (1990-2022)
• No annual road tax (1996-2021)
• No charge on toll roads (1997-2017)
• No charge on ferries (2009-2017)
• Free municipal parking (1999-2017)

Even now, they still receive some of these perks at a discounted rate, rather than free, as EVs make up a larger percentage of the market. For example, ferry and parking fees for EVs are capped at 50% while toll charges are at 70%.

It’s also had business-specific incentives for over 20 years:

• 25% reduced company car tax (2000-2008)
• 50% reduced company car tax (2009-2017)
• Company car tax reduction reduced to 40% (2018-2021) and 20% from 2022.

Comparatively, Australia has only been slowly introducing incentives (as well as a push to extend our public EV charging network) for a few years now.

Those have been at a state-based level and are a bit of a mixed bag:

It’s also worth noting that EVs have been largely ignored at a federal level for decades. In fact, the October 2022 Budget was the first time that the Australian government had delivered a federal electric vehicles incentive. It will see a cut to the price of some electric cars in order to make them more affordable and encourage uptake.

It also mentions a National Electric Vehicle Charging Network that aims to build 117 fast charging stations on major highways across Australia.

These are certainly steps in the right direction. But they’re woefully behind — particularly when they have been combined with premature road tariffs for EV and PHEVs in both Victoria and New South Wales.

Electric Vehicle Council does have some suggestions for business EV incentives

The Council acknowledged the lack of business-specific incentives for EV uptake in the report. It even went so far as to include some ‘gold standard’ suggestions.

These include:

• An upfront rebate or zero-interest loan (of at least $3000), full exemption from stamp duty, and at least 2 years’ free vehicle registration.
• Gradually phasing out incentives, but only after the market achieves 30% EV sales
• Financial incentives to support freight decarbonisation and deployment of enabling infrastructure due to the upfront costs and considerations for switching to electric buses and trucks.

It’s a shame that we’re in 2023 and are still crossing our fingers for the state and federal governments to subsidise EV uptake for commercial ventures.

The sad truth is that business-specific government incentives for EVs in Australia are almost non-existent. The best that most companies can hope for if they’re looking to switch to an EV fleet is to piggyback off what is available to any driver in the state they reside in.

That’s not to say there aren’t some sporadic programs out there. For example, Tasmania has its Electric Vehicle ChargeSmart Grants to encourage organisations to install EV chargers on their premises.

But finding out whether these programs exist can be tricky for regular buyers, and it’s just not enough.

At the end of the day, it simply should not be this hard or expensive for people — or businesses — to try and invest in the future.