From Volvo to Toyota: The best and worst EV manufacturers, ranked

Volvo’s Polestar and Elon Musk’s Tesla have topped the charts in the Climate Council’s ranking of the best and worst car makers in the race to electrify their fleets, while Isuzu remains the only one to have no electric vehicle (EV) plans at all.

Several major car manufacturers have already committed that 100% of their new vehicles will be fully electric by 2030, the Climate Council says — among them, Volvo and Mazda — while Hyundai, Volkswagon, KN, and Honda are working towards a totally electric fleet by 2040.

At the bottom of the table is Australia’s most trusted car maker, Toyota, which has a goal of electrifying a third of its fleet by 2030. It comes as Greenpeace accused Toyota of being a “global roadblock” and “spreading disinformation” about electric vehicles

Toyota is “lobbying to weaken vehicle emissions standards, greenwashing its image and promoting electric vehicle disinformation while making big profits from polluting internal combustion engine and fossil-fuelled hybrid cars,” Greenpeace Electrify Campaign director Lindsay Soutar told SmartCompany.

“While other companies are making rapid shifts to scale up electric vehicle production, Toyota has remained in the slow lane, instead lobbying to delay transition rather than embrace it.”

It’s been a good week for Sweden-based Polestar, which was co-founded by Volvo and China’s Geely, as the EV startup secured $1.6 billion from its two main shareholders — Volvo and PSD Investment — with the latter providing funds through “direct and indirect financial and liquidity support”, Polestar said in a statement.

“We welcome the continued support from our major shareholders at a time when the capital markets are volatile and unpredictable,” Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath said.

Pundits can expect three more Polestar cars to hit the market by 2026, the company said.

Meanwhile, Volvo Australia’s boss Stephen Connor has announced the company will stop selling petrol-powered cars in the next four years. The 2026 deadline is four years earlier than the company’s global commitment to going fully electric.

“We’re not going to wait until 2030. We’re not waiting for the global strategy to come about. We will be fully electric by 2026 in Australia,” Connor told at a dealer conference last week.

“We have the ability in this country to make a difference and bring climate-neutral operation to reality.”

It’s a big leap of faith for Volvo, which only launched its first EV in Australia last year — the XC40 Recharge Pure Electric — with four new models coming from Volvo across the sedan and the SUV categories.

“We’ve seen an opportunity in our marketplace today and our consumers are ready for this. Tesla will sell 20,000 cars this year and the Australian consumer is looking for change,” Connor said.

Competition heats up

It comes as the Tesla brand is taking a battering from its controversial CEO Elon Musk, who recently purchased Twitter for $44 billion and began by rolling out a subscription model for the verification tick to a very mixed reaction.

Musk may want to keep his focus on the most valuable of his five companies, as Tesla delivered an impressive 343,000 vehicles worldwide in the third quarter of 2022, an increase of more than a third over the same period a year earlier.

The pioneering EV company is facing loads of pressure too.

Tesla’s increasingly problematic reliance on China and several lawsuits overseas over Tesla’s Autopilot automated driving system, as well as the heat from emerging and exciting car companies who want a chunk of the EV action.

It may be a while before Tesla feels the competition in Australia however.

The Climate Council is calling for the federal government to implement strong fuel efficiency standards that would finally jolt us onto the path leading to 100% of all cars being zero emissions.

Australia and Russia remain the only two laggards in the OECD to not have implemented fuel efficiency standards.

A market brimming with EV competition would mean cheaper options for Australians looking for greener automotive options. For instance, the cheapest EV in Europe costs just $18,000, the Climate Council points out, compared to the cheapest here costing $50,000.

In August, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen told the National Electric Vehicle Summit that existing fuel efficiency standards are limiting freedom of choice in the market because they create a barrier to the wider adoption of vehicles that do not need petrol or diesel.

“We believe that now is the time to have an orderly and sensible discussion about whether vehicle fuel efficiency standards could help improve the supply of electric vehicles into the Australian market, to address the cost-of-living impacts of inefficient cars, and to reduce emissions from the transport sector,” Bowen said.

“It means consumers aren’t getting the choice available internationally and as the world moves towards more efficient and cleaner vehicles, we risk becoming a dumping ground for older technology which can’t be sold in other markets.”