Page 28 - Australasian Paint & Panel Magazine Jan-Feb 2019
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Industry Intelligence
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PAINT&PANEL JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2019
past few years, what’s going to be an even bigger shift over the next decade or so is the move to all-new technologies like electrification.
Volvo, for example, has already de- clared that every new car it makes from 2019 onwards will be either hybrid, plug-in hybrid or fully electric. This might be a challenge for selling cars in the Australian market, where our gov- ernment’s reluctance to offer any incen- tives or tax breaks for buying EVs has slowed our uptake of the new tech com- pared to European countries, but it will only take a change of policy, or govern- ment, to shift the market rapidly.
In 2017, Australians bought just 1123 electric cars, which was a slight improvement over 2016, when sales hit just 765, out of total national sales of 1,178,133 new vehicles.
What will also help is a drop in prices, and Hyundai has just unveiled what it’s calling the first truly affordable EV, its mid- mid-sized Ioniq, which will be priced from around $45,000, making it just a tiny bit cheaper than the admittedly smaller, but very cute, Renault Zoe, which is already on sale in Australia from $47,490.
Nissan’s excellent all-electric Leaf is also smaller than the Ioniq, yet costs $69,000, while Jaguar’s I-Pace SUV starts at $119,000. The much-tout- ed Model 3 from Tesla will cost around $55,000, but its arrival - now tipped for late 2019 - has been delayed several times already.
As many as 1000 Australians were rumoured to have put down deposits for a Model 3 back in 2016, but Tesla will not say how many of those orders have been cancelled by people who’ve run out of patience.
What Australia also desperately needs is more charging stations, with just 800 in the country at present, but companies like Jaguar are investing millions in in- creasing that number, and the NSW gov- ernment is changing planning proce- dures to make it easier, paperwork-wise, to install them.
Global-warming fears mean that cars that can produce zero emissions are go- ing to be increasingly popular around
FROM TOP: Mercedes-Benz identified the growing passion
for utes and launched the X-Class.
Nissan’s Leaf has been well received and the E+ model has a range of 360km.
VW’s muscular Amarok.


































































































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