Ford Australia Offers Comments On Fuel Efficiency Standards

Across much of the globe, a number of automakers and lobby groups are currently fighting proposed legislation that aims to eventually phase out the sale of pure ICE vehicles, which they view as simply unrealistic. However, Ford is among a select group that is instead embracing such legislation as it aims to transition its European passenger vehicle lineup, specifically, to all-electric power by 2030 or sooner. In Australia, The Blue Oval is also working to make its lineup greener as well, recently adding the Ford Mustang Mach-E and planning to replace the ICE Puma with the forthcoming all-electric Gen-E as well. Now, Ford Australia is sharing its views on how it thinks that particular country can reach its goals in terms of new fuel efficiency and emissions standards, according to CarExpert.

Those goals are officially known as the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES), which calls for increasingly stringent average CO2 targets across entire automaker fleets, which essentially forces automakers to offer more low- or zero-emissions vehicles in the coming years. If automakers fail to meet these targets, they would have two choices – pay penalties, or buy credits from other automakers, which can be earned by meeting or exceeding those same targets. However, Ford Australia believes that the key to reaching these goals isn’t levying penalties on automakers, but rather, offering more incentives for EVs and PHEVs, which will instead encourage those companies to develop more EVs and plug-in hybrids instead of penalizing consumers with higher prices to offset those penalties.

“Our strong recommendation is to include a super credit system that allows all BEV and PHEV light-commercial vehicles, and passenger vehicles to be to be counted as three and two vehicles respectively,” Ford Australia said in a statement. “This will give impetus to deploying the best technologies and achieve real world CO2 reductions in the absence of consumer purchasing incentives.”

“It is our recommendation that penalties be applied only from 2026 at the earliest,” the automaker added. “Further, penalties should commence at $50 per g/km and grow annually over the scheme to a maximum of $100 per g/km. These would enable vehicle manufacturers to bring more zero and low emissions vehicles to Australia while ensuring Australian consumers can continue to access a range of vehicles capable of meeting their needs.”

We’ll have more on this proposed legislation soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for 24/7 Ford news coverage.