Browsing in the EV trucks and buses already on the road, seems to highlight the view they will not take on is wrong
Progress will take place no matter how many excuses Hasbeen makes

Belly have you ever heard that you should compare apples with apples, not oranges.

Nordic countries have huge subsidies for electric cars, so they totally distort their market in favour of electric. This is simply a form of corruption, & I wonder how many Nordic advisers & politicians are no the take to give these subsidies. This is even worse when you realise batteries are at their worst in the cold.

This is my only complaint about electric cars. I personally don't give a damn what powers my shopping trolley, provided the total cost of any car is born by the buyer, not the poor long suffering tax payer.

If electric can become really useful, & price competitive, great. I will never drive one, as I don't pay more than $3000 for a shopping trolley, & I doubt they will get that cheap in my driving years. Even my lady, is doubting the sense in the cost of depreciation of her new cars. She is becoming envious of my 2002, slightly hail damaged low mileage insurance write off, Mazda 323, which has cost just a set of tyres in 5 years, not the $22500 depreciation hers have cost. Electric cars are much worse at the moment.

I do have a couple of 450 Km round trips a month, with no option of recharging, but if I really needed to, I could tow my 10KvA generator along in my trailer to sort that, otherwise I rarely do more than 100Km a day.

So mate, it is not ideology I have against electric, but economics, & I hate government ideology trying to force me into a blind alley of their corrupt choosing. If electric becomes competitive in it's own right great, I'm sure my grandkids won't care what drives their car, if we are still allowed to have a personal car by the time they are driving.

The car industry was a basket case at low exchange rates. It was only kept to give SA a reason to exist apart from a bit of agriculture and mining, and that largess now been replaced by defense spending and a very generous GST distribution.

Please, can anybody explain how 100% renewables are supposed to cheaply and get everyone's batteries charged overnight when their cars are at home? Shorten is away with the fairies on this.

Bespoke nuclear plants do cost a lot, but amortized over 80 years are cheap. Cookie-cutter models a la South Korea are much cheaper and SMR's are imminent, unlike affordable storage solutions.

When will a political party get real and bite the nuclear bullet before we wipe ourselves off the competitive world map? Shorten expects domestic consumers to suck up the renewables power cost to export industries, but isn't saying so.

Hasbeen I truly doubt you and I will live long enough to be forced to own an electric car
Too that second generation cars will more than cover your trip
Still dash to Grafton, a ten hour return trip, without other than a fuel stop
Meet Brother swap loads and return

I would tend to support any policy that might revive manufacturing in Australia.

We can't survive solely on digging holes, making lattes and flipping houses.

SteeleRedux,
'Twas speculation and high interest rates, rather than the mining boom, which pushed our dollar unsustainably high. Maybe if there'd been more time to adjust, our car industry would've survived. But that's far from certain. Putting cars together used to be a high value activity, but it's becoming a low value activity. China's taken most of the value out of value adding, and there's little value left in fabrication. Much more of the value is in intellectual property, and our manufacturers would be better off concentrating on R&D. But most are not.

Luciferase,
SA washout hard by economic policies being set to favour the eastern states. The defence spending and GST distribution are insufficient to make up for that.

>explain how 100% renewables are supposed to cheaply and get everyone's batteries charged overnight
Largely from wind power. But your question contains the false assumption that everyone will be recharging their batteries overnight. Many people have their cars at home during the day. And probably some will be recharged in car parks in the daytime.

>Bespoke nuclear plants do cost a lot, but amortized over 80 years are cheap.
Have any in the world lasted over fifty years yet? Most so far have had much shorter lifespans. 80 years may be a good target lifespan for a new one, but I'd be very wary of economic calculation based on that lifespan.

>Cookie-cutter models a la South Korea are much cheaper and SMR's are imminent, unlike affordable storage solutions.
SMRs have been imminent for twenty years. Meanwhile storage solutions are here and the cost is coming down rapidly.

Biting a nuclear bullet could result in very serious injury. Nuclear makes sense in countries that aren't so sunny and windy, but here it's just too expensive. If we want cheaper power, stopping the generation companies from manipulating the market is the most effective solution.