A robust debate is looming between the powerful, entrenched car industry lobby and the electric vehicle industry, with a major split in the ranks emerging over proposed emissions standards.
The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries has a multi-million-dollar war chest of funding - extracted from the 39 car companies, which make up its group - which it intends to use in an effort to shape public opinion in the months ahead to slow any shift to tough new emission standards for motor vehicles.
It is spending up big on a two-month plan to lobby hard for its internally-developed standards, while the electric vehicle industry wants fresh standards that align more closely with the tougher standards in Europe.
The chamber's "voluntary" emission standards are aimed at protecting the industry from what it claims is a too-rapid transition to tough standards.
Shaping up to the chamber at the opposite side of the ring is the EV Council, which wants Australia to stop selling emitting vehicles by 2035. The ACT government is the first in Australia to back this plan, announcing that it would not permit the sale of fossil-fuel cars and small trucks after 2035.
Transport is Australia's third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and the head of the EV Council says there is no path to net zero by 2050 unless very tough standards are adopted.
"Cars in Australia have a 15-year average life span. If we're still selling a significant quantity of combustion engine vehicles in 2036 we fail on net zero. It's that simple," he said.
A key driver behind the chamber-developed compromised standards is Australia's biggest selling car company, Toyota, whose chief executive Matthew Callachor chairs the lobby group's executive board.
Toyota, the country's market leader for 25 years and the biggest contributor to the chamber war chest, has invested billions of dollars in its hybrid vehicle program and sells more hybrid vehicles in Australia than any other car maker. In the past financial year it sold 73,000 Toyota and Lexus branded hybrid vehicles.
Hybrid vehicles are not zero emission vehicles. They rely on a petrol engine to charge an onboard battery system.
According to the Australian government's green vehicle guide, Toyota's best-selling hybrid, the Toyota RAV4, produces 109 grams of carbon emissions per kilometre travelled, calculated on a combined urban and open road driving cycle.
Toyota is also a big seller of very popular, high-emitting diesel-engine models like the Hilux and LandCruiser 4WDs.
However, the emissions discussion throws up a number of complexities, particularly with European companies like Volkswagen, which is investing billions of dollars in decarbonisation.
VW Australia's managing director Paul Sansom has pledged to work "more closely than ever with the EV Council" which it says "has been the most effective industry body in this sphere [of decarbonisation]".
New research by the Australia Institute think tank shows that $5.9 billion in fuel costs would have been saved and emissions equivalent to a year's worth of domestic flights would have been avoided, if robust fuel efficiency standards were adopted seven years ago.
Former Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison famously used an anti-electric vehicle scare pitch in the Liberal-National coalition's successful 2019 election campaign, in which he claimed EVs would "ruin your weekend".
In its May election campaign this year, the new Labor government campaigned heavily on a policy to cut the nation's total emissions by 43 per cent by 2030. This legislation has since been passed in the House of Representatives, but still needs to get through the Senate.
There is no more intense interest in this debate than in Canberra, where over the weekend 10,000 people visited the Australian Electric Vehicle Association's inaugural EV Expo, where companies throughout Australia exhibited their products and capabilities to an eager audience.
