Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to take this opportunity to speak on this. Just yesterday I was a guest of the Caravan Industry Association at their show down in Melbourne; I stopped in on my way from Perth to Canberra yesterday. I went and had a look at this industry. It is an enormous industry. Did you know that 93 per cent of the caravans driving around in Australia are manufactured in Victoria alone, in the suburbs of Campbellfield and Epping? It's an enormous industry, and it employs tens of thousands of people. You think of the country towns that are benefited by people travelling on their holidays, whether they be young families or grey nomads, as they often like to be called—well, maybe they don't like to be called that, but they are often referred to as that. The reality is this policy the government is bringing in is going to have a very significant impact upon that industry and upon people's lifestyles.

As Senator Canavan was saying, there is no equivalent, when it comes to electric vehicles, that will be able to handle the loads required or the heavy loads on the back of a ute or on the back of a towbar, when they will be towing a caravan or boat around the country. It's just not practical. Yes, these EVs have the torque that is available, and they can tow up to, in some cases, like the F-150 Lightning, 4½ tonnes, but you can only tow for about 100 kilometres before you've got to recharge. The battery in an F-150 Lightning weighs 900 kilos. That 900-kilo battery is being hauled around, with extra wear and tear on the roads. Imagine having an accident with a car that heavy. And you know what? The gravimetric energy density of that battery is only 250 watt hours per kilogram compared to fuel, which is 11,700. So that 900-kilo battery is equivalent to 18 litres of fuel.

In my home state, where we like to go out in the great outdoors, in July it's like a great exodus from Perth; people go up north to places like Ningaloo, which is about a 1,300-kilometre drive. Can you imagine, every hour, having to pull over and recharge your vehicle. There's nothing, even on the periphery of science, of technology, that is going to see a tenfold increase in the energy density of batteries. The problem is you've got this enormous battery of about 120 kilowatt hours in an F-150 Lightning—that's a big American truck, mind you; it's bigger than a HiLux or a Ranger. Imagine having to recharge that. That's twice the size of a Tesla battery. It would take three hours to recharge that battery.

When we go up—and we go up most Julys and have done for many, many years; we have towed our caravan up to Exmouth—there's a fuel stop that we have to stop at, because you can't make it to the next location, between Geraldton and Carnarvon. It's called the Billabong Roadhouse. When you go up there in the middle of the July school holidays, you've got to wait about half an hour to get fuel—and that's assuming it only takes maybe five minutes to refuel a petrol tank. Imagine if the queue of cars that needed to recharge at that point all had to wait three hours. Imagine the size of the power station you'd have to build right next door to it to ensure that you had enough throughput and enough ability to charge multiple vehicles all at once. Imagine the size of the power station you would need right there; I bet it would be a diesel powered power station! It's just completely impractical.

I met with the association yesterday. They're optimistic about the future, but the innovation that's required to solve this problem is not coming in the next two or three years. The policy that the government is bringing in is imposing the cost on purchases of vehicles in the next couple of years. There is no innovation, even on the horizon, that would deal with the very practical limitations. I haven't even talked about tradies who need to carry heavy equipment to do their job. A reason why tools are heavy is because they have heavy work to do. (Time expired)