New tax on electric cars being considered, but experts believe it’d do more harm than good

There are reports the state government could introduce a tax on electric cars as soon as next year.

The theory is they’re avoiding petrol taxes.

“So they convince you to drive an electric car to save the planet, then bung a tax on you,” Neil Mitchell said on Thursday.

Under the proposal, electric cars would be tracked by GPS and then charged on a per kilometre basis.

3AW Mornings car guru, Paul Gover from cars.guide.com.au, said some form of tax was inevitable.

But he said a tax would do more harm than good in the current environment.

“There are so few electric cars … it’s just another impediment for people actually getting into them,” Gover explained.

“There are probably going to be less than 1000 pure electric cars sold in Australia this year, maybe more than that with Tesla, but the fact of the matter is they need incentives to get people into electric cars, not disincentives.

“And the other thing is, as soon as they can track you through GPS to charge your kilometre rate, how long until they put it into everybody’s car?”

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