Department officials have confirmed that they overlooked all-electric options to replace the government’s Comcar vehicle fleet, but delayed providing further details for why two models of Tesla were excluded from the initial shortlist.
Officials from the federal department of finance were queried by Australian Greens Janet Rice on the process to select the new fleet of Comcar vehicles, which overlooked all-electric models, including two models of Tesla, as first reported by The Driven.
Confusingly, the department’s officials confirmed during the Senate estimates hearing that they had test-driven two models of Tesla all-electric vehicles as part of the first stage ‘desktop’ assessment of 18 potential models.
The Teslas were the only models test-driven as part of this early assessment, but they were subsequently cut from the final shortlist of seven vehicles.
“There was test driving of a couple of cars in the first in the first stage, the Tesla models, it was the Model S and the Model X,” the Department of Finance official told Senate estimates.
The two Tesla models were overlooked in the second stage assessment, which considered the narrow list of seven potential vehicles, consisting of “a mix of sedans and SUVs from Hyundai, BMW, Toyota and Mercedes.”
To read the full story on RenewEconomy’s electric vehicle dedicated sister site, The Driven, click here…
