The Victorian government has cooked up a sneaky Appeasement Burger on EVs - apparently there’s going to be subsidies now. And taxes. Which is of course intelligence-insulting and absurd. And don’t the lobby groups just love it?

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If you’re watching this from a civilised country, please accept my unreserved and sincere apologies. It must seem strange to see a jurisdiction this backward, connected to the Internet. But I assure you I’m not making this up.

The EV tax is still in, of course, but apparently there are also going to be EV subsidies now. So that’s not, like, robbing Peter to pay Peter, is it? It’s actually just so some minister can whip out the subsidies in press conferences to counter EV tax criticism from the dumb news media.

There will be 20,000 subsidies - which sound like a lot, but isn’t. $3000 apiece for EVs costing less than $69,000 as part of a $100 million so-called ‘EV encouragement package’.

It’s pathetic. It’s less than getting the GST back. And here’s where the lobbyists come in. Yesssssss! First up. Let’s do the Electric Vehicle Council, a credible-sounding name that really just represents a bunch of big businesses gagging to sell EVs and EV-related goods and services, like electricity and chargers, to you, in the public.

“Only 0.1 per cent of Victorian cars are currently electric. The subsidies announced could help drive that figure up sharply and put a huge dent in Victoria's carbon emissions.”

This allegedly huge dent: 20,000 EVs. According to the national Survey of Motor Vehicle Use, from Ausstats, which anyone can download, for the 12 months to June 30, 2020, there are four million passenger vehicles in Vicwegia. More or less.

20,000 new EVs would represent half of one per cent of passenger vehicles in Vicwegia. (And it will take 10 years to sell that many, at the current rate of uptake.)

Passenger vehicles are demonised often, but they are really responsible for roughly only nine per cent of total greenhouse emissions. So that’s nine per cent of half a per cent of a reduction in greenhouse…

...which is a reduction of about 450 parts per million (of Vicwegia’s CO2 production). So every time Vicwegia emits one tonne of CO2, these subsidies represent (at best) the reduction of 450 grams. Per tonne. Therefore, the Electric Vehicle Council’s “huge dent” hypothesis does not hold water. In fact the dent is barely measurable and certainly insignificant.