Victoria’s state motoring club wants the excise collection system for internal combustion cars to be fixed by road charges as electric vehicles sales rise.
RACV general manager Bryce Prosser says the lack of road user charging to capture excise from electric vehicles signals a “broken” system allowing people to avoid paying for the roads they use.
According to VFACTS reported sales data from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, annual private passenger hybrid sales are up 83.5% at the end of July, as are private passenger all-electric/plug-in hybrids up 19.2%.
The biggest increase for electrified drivetrain sales however, has been in private hybrid SUVs which are up 495% compared with 2018, rocketing from 52 in 2018 to 722 at the end of July.
Private electric/PHEV sales also went through the roof this year, up 476% from just six at the end of July 2018 to 80 by the end of last month.
The results come as Toyota reports hybrid RAV4 sales sold out with a four-month wait as of mid-June 2019. The figures also see the FCAI’s merging of reported sales data from all-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, where they were once separate.
Bryce Prosser, RACV
The RACV says spending less on fuel is costing the government excise to keep roads maintained.
“The current system relying on fuel excise, GST and various federal and state motoring taxes is complex and broken and should be replaced with a fairer, more equitable system,” Prosser says.
“We need an overhaul of the current system… Road-user charging that considers how, when and where we travel is more sustainable and fairer,” he explains.
Prosser’s declaration comes as Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims said recently the buyers of electric cars and hybrids were short changing the system designed to recover 41 cents per litre of fuel spent.
“People who buy electric cars are travelling on roads without cost, and that’s really not fair,” he said.
