Japan to ban fossil fuel car sales by 2035. Will Australia follow or become a Cuba?

The Driven

Reports have emerged that Japan – another key right-hand drive market – is considering banning the sals of all new petrol and diesel cars and light commercial vehicles by 2035.

The move follows Japanese PM Suga Yoshihide’s pledge to slash Japan’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2050, and would see only electric, hybrid and fuel cell vehicles sold from 2035.

First reported by Japanese news agency NHK on Thursday (Japan time), the potential ban on fossil fuelled vehicles comes shortly after the UK confirmed that it would ban the sale of pure petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030, and hybrids from 2035.

Other countries and states are doing the same, and as Ketan Joshi noted on Thursday, the world is looking to the success of Norway, which is banning fossil fuel car sales from 2025, in how to do the clean transport transition well.

But the news that Japan, which along with the UK is the key right-hand drive market, will follow suit is important, and should not be swept under the policy door-mat that highlights the Morrison government’s lack of commitment on climate change action.

Because Australia no longer makes its own cars, it is wholly dependent on overseas OEMs, and when those OEMs stop making petrol and diesel cars – which Australians are still buying up in bootloads – our national infrastructure, and policy, will need to be ready for it.

As Eytan Lenko, exective chair of climate action advocacy group Beyond Zero noted in a tweet on Thursday, how Australia responds now will determine how smoothly the transition to clean transport is in Australia – or risk, as we have noted here and here, becoming the Cuba of the western world, but without the 1950s nostalgia.

To read the full version of this story, please go to our EV-focussed sister site, The Driven and click here…