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Australia needs to quit its obsession with utes.
While there’s no question Australian motorists love the likes of the Ford Ranger, Toyota HiLux and co. a new report has highlighted the problem with this obsession. Put simply, Australia is going the wrong way when it comes to fuel use and emissions production compared to the rest of the world.
This is one of the key findings from a new report from the politically independent think tank, the Australia Institute, entitled - In reverse: The wrong way to fuel savings and falling transport emissions. The report looked at Australian vehicle buying habits, fuel use and emissions production in comparison with the rest of the world, but in particular the United Kingdom. The UK was chosen as a comparison tool because it’s a similar right-hand-drive market with a large rural and regional population.
One of the most damning facts in the report is a study of emissions growth between 2000 and 2020 of cars and light-duty trucks, which shows Australia increased its emissions by 17 per cent over that time, while most similar markets were able to reduce emissions over the same period. While Australian emissions grew, the UK managed to cut its output by 25 per cent and even the USA managed an eight per cent decrease.
According to the report, this means the current Federal Labour Government’s aim to reduce emissions by 43 per cent from 2005 levels by the end of the decade is “virtually impossible” unless we suddenly change the type of vehicles we buy.
In 2022 Australians bought 228,671 utes compared to just 115,196 hybrid and electric vehicles.
“Australians buy big dumb cars and that means we spend a lot more on petrol than we should,” the report’s authors wrote. “The fact that these cars stay on the road for a long time makes it harder to achieve our emission reduction targets. In addition, the fact that we want to have a stockpile of liquid fuels means that the more fuel we use, the more money we need to spend storing lots of fuel - and 2023 does not seem like the time to be spending money on liquid fuel storage.”
Of course, it’s easy for some think tank analysts to say we should be buying cleaner, more efficient cars, but it’s a lot harder for it to actually happen. Honestly, if we all thought about it for a moment we probably already knew this was true and didn’t need a report on it, but we buy inefficient cars that don’t really suit our practical needs.
I mean, were there really nearly 230,000 tradies in Australia that needed a new ute in 2022? Seems a little high to me, especially when you consider so many modern utes aren’t really workhorses any more and are instead being bought because they come with some pretty significant and appealing tax breaks.
As we’ve written before, for all of the anti-EV sentiment about incentives being unfair, the tax breaks provided to utes have been very successful in driving up demand for these types of vehicles in Australia for the past decade.
So while there should never be any mandate from the government of what type of vehicles we are allowed to drive - because that’s a slippery slope to slide down - there’s no reason why the Federal and State Governments cannot incentivise us to drive more efficient cars, as long as they suit our needs.
The Australia Institute report makes the same point ultimately, suggesting in its conclusion that the government should look at a stricter emissions and fuel consumption test regime as well as changing the registration policy to provide lower fees for more efficient vehicles - rather than the current weight-based system.
If and when any government would act on such ideas remains unclear, but even if none do there’s still an opportunity for us, as car consumers, to think more carefully about the choices we make when we next have to buy a new vehicle.
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