Electric cars are selling briskly, and the public is regularly told this proves Australians have embraced the future. Jeremy Cordeaux offered a blunter reading on this week’s Court of Public Opinion — with a very large number attached to it.
The Figure Behind The Sales
He’d looked it up that morning: subsidies to the electric-car industry totalling $23.4 billion by 2036. No wonder, he said, they’re selling well. When a product is propped up by tens of billions in public money, strong sales don’t simply reflect consumer enthusiasm — they reflect the subsidy doing its work.
That reframing matters, because those sales figures are constantly waved about as proof the market has spoken. Jeremy’s question is how much of that “verdict” is really being paid for out of everyone’s taxes.
The Test Still To Come
His sharpest question looked ahead: what happens when the support disappears — if it disappears? It is the honest test of any subsidised market. If demand is genuine, it survives the incentives winding back. If it collapses the moment the money stops, the demand was manufactured all along.
Jeremy’s scepticism was plain. He suspects the strength of electric-car sales leans heavily on that $23.4 billion, and would sag noticeably without it.
The Servicing Gap
The subsidy question sits beside a practical worry Jeremy has raised before — the parts shortages and long off-road waits that can strand electric-vehicle owners for months. A heavily subsidised product that is hard to service is, in his view, shaky at both ends: propped up at the point of sale, under-supported once you drive it home.
Follow The Money
Jeremy is no enemy of new technology, and has said so repeatedly. His objection is to distortion — governments using vast subsidies to engineer an outcome, then presenting the result as organic success. The true measure of the electric car’s appeal, he argued, is what happens when the $23.4 billion is gone.
Until then, his advice is the one he applies to everything: follow the money before you accept the headline. Strong sales sound like a triumph of choice — attach the price tag, and the picture shifts.
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