FCAI should formally withdraw exposed, misleading claims about Efficiency Standards

he Electric Vehicle Council is calling on the leaders of the Federal Chamber of Automative Industries to formally withdraw their now discredited claims about car price increases from their lobbying against New Vehicle Efficiency Standards. The FCAI has been promoting extraordinary projections that claim the price of popular car models would increase by up by $6000 to $25,000 under the government’s proposed legislation. However, an internal FCAI briefing paper, obtained by the media, shows that the FCAI’s actual modelling makes more realistic assumptions based on trends in consumer and car maker behaviour. EVC chief executive Behyad Jafari has called on the FCAI to change tack. “Anyone who knows anything about how efficiency standards actually work across the globe would recognise the FCAI’s public claims about price are not honest or credible,” Mr Jafari said. “You won’t hear any actual car maker echo the FCAI’s claims because they know their credibility would be shredded if they did. “If the FCAI wants to lobby against New Vehicle Efficiency Standards I think that’s a strange decision, but it’s their prerogative. I just think anything they tell the public should at least be based on the same – admittedly still flawed – information they tell each other. “The idea that any model would shoot up by any significant amount can only be supported if you base you modelling on completely unrealistic assumptions, which is exactly what we now see the FCAI has been doing. “The FCAI knows that New Vehicle Efficiency Standards work by nudging car makers to change their behaviour – both by selling more efficient version of their existing combustion engine models and by offering consumers a more attractive range of EVs and plug-in hybrids. “This idea that car makers would suddenly jack up prices by huge amounts is pure fantasy, and anyone objective will tell you this. The US has had efficiency standards in place since last century, and the number one and two cars sold in America last year were both big combustion engine utes, they just build them to be more efficient. “Far from costing consumers, New Vehicle Efficiency Standards will help Australian hip pockets. As our fleet gets more efficient we won’t have to spend as much on petrol, which is a huge cost of families. “Without Efficiency Standards Australia will continue to be the global dumping ground for outdated, inefficient cars.”