A note on Australia's NVES

I returned to Australia Q3 2012 having worked for an early Tesla, on US DoE vehicle efficiency projects and on other electrification work. I joined Toyota in an environmental/sustainable mobility role at a time just before the local auto industry imploded, when ironically there were also some solid, nascent, local vehicle electrification projects going. I met and worked with people that wanted and worked for a CO2/fuel efficiency standard for years - it was a very thankless, lonely slog. They were very impassioned people that cared greatly for this country's future in ways that most did not speak of at the time, but which have proven logical and salient since.

I and others learnt immensely from these people.

Back then for/against arguments were thrown around in industry like ideological footballs that reflected the equity of the organisations making them: did you locally manufacture big cars? Did you have hybrids to sell? Did you have very efficient turbodiesels? Would your tech make Euro 6? Would our fuel quality support more efficient engines? Would our mass market want to buy a car with a smaller engine that was more powerful and efficient than the larger lump it replaced? Would they pay a little more for it, or would they walk away? If we communicated embodied CO2 how would the complexion of the arguments change? Grid CO2 looked a bit nasty unless in Tasmania, was the renewables transition really coming? Hell, people were installing gas trigen units back then, resi solar cost $4/kW and feed-in tariffs covered retail costs. My own executives took a competitor product for a drive (heavier platform, larger engine, considerably more tailpipe CO2 in any condition) and didn't understand why their identically-priced, lighter, smarter, and greener hybrid mousetrap didn't virtuously outsell it into oblivion. They also wanted to us to consider replacing the engine platform we had with something smaller, smarter, and even more efficient. Amusingly the teams responsible for communicating what the market wanted and those in Japan assessing market strategic need on environmental best interests each thought the other somewhat mad. For my part I'd occasionally go give presentations on future mobility to the small, alternative audiences that would have us; the same small audiences my predecessors would diligently address and support.

Meanwhile the auto industry's peak body effectively ran an open suggestion box across all - those concerned being volumetrically displaced by the concerns of those affected - concluded that cars were getting incrementally better anyway (they were) and laid slumber to any further contention. Those thinking 'future' were crushed. Again.

The future thinkers would point out that only three significant auto markets left had none and we were one; that this was not enviable. That much of the point of these standards was their apparent boldness which directly forced the auto industry to incentivise investments in new technology so that they'd be viable in a future consistent with broader socioeconomic market aspirations; reasonable arguments in an industry where new tech typically took four product generations to normalise in market. There were markets already betting the future on EVs, big markets too: Europe, California having it's second swing at it after the late 90's CARB effort each with average targets, supercredits for EVs, or both.

And their EVs did appear, and the necessary investments in tech happened. And the inevitable was pulled into focus given a long-term strategic view of what a good future was and should be. But not in Australia. Our then-current political echo chamber was busy lowering the quality of social discourse at the time - energy policy was afterthought territory, wind turbines ruined views and major automakers (and the >10x industry capital built over a century and then some they supported) were goaded to leave. They broadly did and we are much poorer for it. We entered a period wherein a great many talented and impassioned Australians worked diligently on vehicle electrification; they did it on foreign soil for foreign companies building products, technologies, knowledge capital and social license that didn't come to our shores for years. Much of it still hasn't. I had made and returned from that journey almost singularly and certainly opportunistically; they now left in droves. They paid mortgages in foreign countries in lieu of opportunities squandered in their names here and raised families with foreign passports. Much of it hasn't come back, much of it never will.

We watched the one significant EV trial in Australia at the time (the Victorian Government's trial) conclude with nothing significant to follow it. That trial was the work of an absolute legend of a Future Thinker much dedicated to the cause, still is. We ran some Prius PHEV prototypes in it through GoGet Carshare for the public, and the car we kept internally was used to run fuel efficiency competitions among staff. People became competitive, aware. We created more Future Thinkers, so much so that we ignored several requests from our parent company to conclude said project. It was end-of-life. Eventually Someone Important made themselves Extremely Difficult to Ignore and we conceded. There wasn't anything to replace it in Australia as our market had not deemed a viable future for it. I can't quite communicate the diligence with which the right people tried; it was huge. Margins were - are - tight in auto sales. But no efficiency standards. We kept running driver training on other hybrids, and talked to like-minded people at other companies, government departments and CSIRO about what could and should have been.

Efficiency standards had a brief renaissance in prominence a few years later; the government changed, various importers opted to bring in more EVs and PHEVs, particularly marques with high-performance, high-polluting things. They figured that the regulatory landscape could change faster in ways adverse to their interests than could new model importation and homologation. People with M3's started to sprout i3's. A Panamera PHEV to go with your 911 Turbo. Some believed the EV renaissance had started; some looked at Nissan struggling to move its lot of 2012 LEAFs long after 2012 and concluded otherwise.

Then Tesla did come to our shores after an initial delay betting on a market opportunity far larger than cars alone (and the precedent 8 Roadsters sold here). The initial Model S was a transformative car, not necessarily a great car but it continued to develop and became one rather quickly. It drew blood in segment and people started to believe at last. Renault imported some EVs and was particularly smart with supply and pricing, and arguably did something more impressive if less broadly memorable than Tesla in the same time period. We had awareness, we had the start of something. We had J1772 and CHAdeMO and Type 2 connectors swimming around in the same market because we'd had over a decade of governments and representative bodies asleep at the wheel when the rest of the world was off Making Important Decisions, but we also had an exit date for large, heavy Conformadores in local manufacture. We had a JET Charge with a pretty good business plan. We had the inevitability of other markets that made the cars we would now only import casting a die that even the most rusted-on voices could not writhe from. Those same voices will raise the same concerns and complaints they've always done when efficiency standards are mentioned - talking heads will write that these need to be rebutted for a greater good and whilst they're correct, these voices now live in a time where their equity and relevance is vastly diminished: even children today often want for EVs, a decade ago they had to be explained.

The news of our government finally introducing a National Vehicle Efficiency Standard is much welcomed and overdue. There's much high-fiving and scene-stealing in predictable circles and whilst we should all be for the outcome, we should also have some cognisance for the context of the effort that got us here: it is far more bittersweet, more storied in time, breadth and depth than many may appreciate or acknowledge. What is apparent today stands on the shoulders of some of our brightest minds contributing over a very long time; pre Elon, pre customers, pre the vast majority of people thinking EVs are now a thing doing so, pre the vast majority of people in any industry contributing to eMobility locally thinking this might have a future here.

As a nation we really should have listened then; we remain an anomaly of a market for getting on board this late. The US had fuel efficiency standards in the 70's. Our developments today are not a parallel, they are barely parity. It's neither bold nor disruptive but comparatively conventional to legislate towards EV uptake in a time where all external factors are compliant and very near or in commercialisation; a firm push on a movement with already strong inertia towards an inevitable conclusion. The benefits that have eluded us as a market, as a society though this inaction are immense. We’ve missed and lost so much, and yet we are no less capable or deserving a people.

There is so much more to do to bring our transport sector - and its confluences with adjacent sectors - into global competitiveness. It starts with the ensuing four-week consultation the proposed efficiency standard requires. Today there's a veritable army of people and interests that will swarm it for the better: among them, less obvious, are the minority that were there all the while.

I hope we might develop into a place that recognises the strategic importance of their contributions with deserved, early aclarity.

And I hope these recent developments might inspire them to keep the faith.