Comment: Sky News takes on EVs and gets it wrong

Ex-2GB broadcaster radio Alan Jones spent a good portion of his Sky News program on Monday night hurling around falsehoods about electric vehicles and the serious policy work of various organisations that seek to promote their use.

Using a freshly-released Grattan Institute report as well as International Energy Agency (IEA) reports, Jones and fellow presenter Peta Credlin led a seemingly co-ordinated evening of anti-EV propaganda. Neither Jones nor Credlin is a stranger to hyperbole, but this latest tirade is the stuff that makes the pearl-clutching around fast Falcons in the 1970s look pretty tame.

Jones took issue with the Grattan report suggesting Australia’s path to EV adoption should mirror that of the European Union, where member states are one-by-one announcing the end of ICE sales by 2035 – which is quite some time away.

The Grattan Institute pitches itself as a non-partisan, independent think tank, rivalling the right-wing offerings that range from serious (Centre For Independent Studies) to the unashamedly libertarian (Institute for Public Affairs) as well as left-wing organisations such as the Australia Institute and the Australian Fabians.

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Sky is broadcast to a small audience on Foxtel – which includes politicians and empty airport lounges – as well as regional NSW via WIN in the north and Southern Cross Television in the south.

Jones is part of a line-up that social media has dubbed Sky After Dark, a term popularised by Malcolm Turnbull. The roster includes former Tony Abbott adviser Peta Credlin and media personalities Paul Murray and Andrew Bolt. These presenters are given airtime to say incendiary things to their nightly audiences that hover well under the 100,000 mark. While these numbers are pretty low – Play School repeats are vastly better rated – their clips are then exported around the world via social media to a large audience. It’s worth noting Sky’s Twitter account was shut down after the relentless ridicule its posts received from Twitter users.

Jones made a number of comments about both the Grattan report as well as EVs themselves. He declared the report “a new hoax” to add to the list of hoaxes he regularly talks about, which include climate change and various COVID-related issues.

He went on to say that EV buyers enjoy subsidies of around $33,000 per car, a figure he claims to have taken from an International Energy Agency report. Needless to say, this figure is not offered by the IEA and is unverifiable in the sense that it’s extraordinarily unlikely. It appears to be a conflation of various different subsidies and incentives offered around the globe, which the IEA says averages out to around $6000 per car.

Jones quoted the head of the IEA, Fatih Birol in his monologue, although it’s more accurate to say he misquoted him – while also thinking he was a woman named Faith.

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“Could someone just read the report from the International Energy Agency, the director Faith says, ‘if you think you’re going to change climate by bringing in the production of electric cars’, she says think again.”

Birol himself did not say that, rather describing EVs as “indispensable in reaching net-zero emissions.”

Jones took further information from the report to claim that EVs need to travel around between 25,000 and 60,000km before having a positive carbon impact. He neglected to mention that those figures were based on the current carbon intensiveness of the global electricity grid. The share of renewable energy is rapidly growing in the Australian and global grid supply statistics, so that number can only shrink over time.

Another Sky host, Peta Credlin – who advised Tony Abbott to victory in 2013 with policies such as repealing the carbon tax and the repeal of other carbon abatement measures – also spent some time drawing a series of long bows. Speaking to an overwhelmingly older demographic, Credlin believes a “green elite” is responsible for the net-zero emissions policies around the world.

“Make no mistake, this net zero agenda is about so much more than the environment. It is about making sweeping changes to the way older people live their lives, the car they drive, the food they eat and the number of children they have,” she said.

The last one seems especially silly given the demographic watching her show are probably well past child-rearing age and are more likely bouncing a grandchild on their knee as they watch.

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Credlin repeated the idea that EV uptake would require billions in subsidies, which may be true – but ICE vehicles are currently subsidised in various ways, including the billions of dollars in tax rebates for diesel in Australia.

Credlin suggested Australians are buying ICE utes because they don’t want to go electric – despite EV utes on sale in Australia numbering exactly zero – but strong reservation numbers for the Tesla Cybertruck among local buyers (despite it not coming here) suggests the demand for ZEV utes is strong. Any story about Rivian or the recent Ford F-150 Lightning also attracts a lot of interest.

Needless to say, almost every fact both hosts used to back up their view was either flatly incorrect or was not presented in the correct context.

Both hosts are, if you’ll pardon the expression, pissing into the wind. One-by-one, manufacturers are committing to EVs as the basis for their ongoing survival. The year 2035 is a long way away and as the cost of batteries falls, so will prices. (Jones also claimed a battery replacement cost of $35,000, another figure he appears to have invented.)

No matter what policy settings are adopted by Australian governments, by 2035 most car sales will be electrified. I think - and hope - there will still be noisy stuff for the weekend, but on weekdays, we’ll be wafting along on electrons.