Sold out: why Australia doesn’t have enough electric vehicles to go around
Matt Holding set an alarm on his phone so he wouldn’t miss out on a limited release of electric vehicles, but by the time he jumped online to buy one they had sold out.
In six and a half minutes, all 109 of Hyundai’s electric SUVs had sold – 18,000 Australians had registered their interest.
“You’ve just got to keep on trying and get in there straight away, which seems ridiculous when you’re purchasing an $80,000 car,” Holding says of the second time he tried to beat the queue to buy Hyundai’s Ioniq 5.
The pace at which the cars sold out is part of a broader issue, according to leaders in the industry, as the demand for them in Australia now outstrips supply.
“Our biggest issue now is actually attracting supply of electric vehicles, not getting Australians interested in buying them,” says Behyad Jafari, the chief executive of the Electric Vehicle Council.
Jafari says Australia is underserved in EVs compared with many other countries due to a lack of government EV and climate policies. The majority of EVs are instead flowing to countries that require car manufacturers to sell them in order to meet fuel efficiency standards and CO2 emission reduction schemes. The UK has banned the sale of all new petrol-run cars by 2030, in South Korea the date is 2025.
Last year, the Morrison government announced it would partner with the private sector to fund 50,000 EV charging stations in homes, 500 for businesses and 1,000 in public areas. This is one part of the government’s $2.1bn funded future fuels and vehicle strategy. A spokesperson for the energy minister, Angus Taylor, said the strategy will make “it easier for Australians to make the choice to switch to a new technology vehicle that’s right for them”.
But Australia remains the only
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