Uphold the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard!
The AEVA has reiterated its support for the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES) passed by the Commonwealth government last year, and insisted the regulations be strengthened and extended. The NVES requires importers of a single marque of road-going passenger vehicles to achieve a fleet-wide average emissions rating of 141 gCO2/km for passenger cars and 210 gCO2/km for light commercial vehicles in 2025, and progressively decrease their fleet average emissions each year.
However the regulations underwent several revisions before being passed, with lobbyists from the auto industry successfully watering down many of the features it sought to uphold. The standard also only runs until 2029, does not include heavy vehicles, and has exclusions for a range of particularly large light commercial vehicles as they were not subject to emissions testing at the time they were homologated.
Recent comments by the federal Opposition leader suggesting the standard could be repealed entirely drew swift criticism from AEVA. A media release was circulated on February 12th 2025.
Image: By Ruben de Rijcke - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8735834