"Shameful": Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

Victoria expects to raise around $30 million a year.The move has been seen by some within the EV industry as a tax grab by the states, hoping to seize some direct revenue resources as the federal fuel excise tax depletes in future years if, and when, the uptake of EVs becomes a major part of the market.Behyad Jafari, CEO of the Electric Vehicle Council, described the announcement as “shameful” and said he had repeatedly tried to obtain meetings with the Victoria government without success.The announcements come in the same week that the UK announced it would ban the sale of new diesel and petrol cars by 2030, bringing the move forward from 2035 and 2040, with California following suit and the EU possibly bringing forward its proposed ban to 2025, as Norway is doing.“I can’t begin to express how strange and disappointing this is from state governments,” Jafari said in a Tweet. But as we shift away from petrol and diesel, diseases linked to air pollution and other costs associated with climate change will also decrease,” Jafari said.The most enthusiastic proponent of an EV tax has been the Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, which celebrated the “tax on millionaire” car drivers in a statement on Saturday.“It is not fair right now that a family in a Mazda or a Kia is paying to use the roads while a millionaire in an elecgtric Tesla, Porsche or Jaguar gets a free ride,” said IPA CEO Adrian Dwyer, who wrote a thesis on road user chargers.“Electric vehicles … don’t levitate, and they should be paying to use the roads like everyone else.”Pallas echoed those comments, telling reporters on Saturday that it was not fair that “a tradie driving a Hilux ute” paid fuel excise, while those driving a Tesla avoid it because they do not use petrol.The statement from the IPA is misleading on many fronts.