More EV Utes in Aus please

More details: https://farmersforclimateaction.org.au/portfolio/we-want-more-electric-utes-in-australia/

Sign the open letter, link above.

Tell the government: We want more electric utes in Australia

Dear Minister for Transport Catherine King MP,

Cc Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen MP

My name is Peter Stray. I’m a fifth generation beef and sheep farmer in the Golden Plains region of Victoria.

​​Thank you for your promise to design and deliver fuel efficiency standards for Australia.

I am writing to urge you to make our standards strong and well  designed. We need them to be competitive and effective so Australian  farmers can get our hands on cleaner utes and cars that are cheaper to  run.

I’m a member of Farmers for Climate  Action – one of more than 8,000 farmers across Australia who want to see  deep emissions reductions across the economy this decade.

Farming is getting harder. With an El Niño declared, we started destocking because I don’t want to go through another season wondering if I can feed my animals.

Minister, we want to do our bit to reduce emissions to make sure that we can keep farming into the future.

We want cleaner, lower emissions farm operations – including our  vehicles. But we can’t make the business case stack up because the  choice of electric and fuel efficient vehicles on the market in  Australia is so limited. They’re also far too expensive.

There are utes being made with ranges  of around 800km now. If we can sort our fuel efficiency standards out,  those utes will make it to Australia instead of just to the EU and US.

I already drive further and pay more  for fuel than those in the city, so the cost of living impact is getting  increasingly real.

Australia is one of the only wealthy  countries in the world without legislated national fuel efficiency  standards. If we get our standards right, it’ll be an incentive for  manufacturers to send far more low and zero emissions new vehicles  (including farm utes) to Australia.

Farmers and regional Australians want stronger Fuel Efficiency Standards.

Which is why I’m inviting them to  sign their names to this letter to ensure there is no doubt in our  message that we need the Australian Government to step up and sort this  out.

Sincerely,

Peter Stray