Why Australia’s proposed new vehicle emissions standards will be bad for boaters

The problem is that the proposed New Vehicle Efficiency Standard will hit one segment of vehicles very hard. And unfortunately, it’s a segment representing the choice of tow rig that a good number of the more than one million licenced boaters spread throughout Australia use to haul their boat to and from the launching ramp.

Compounding this is the fact that since the shutdown of the Australian car industry, efforts to reduce vehicle emissions here have largely flatlined. The reason? As soon as the local car industry tap was shut off, Aussies – largely encouraged by government tax breaks favouring their purchase – have filled the gap with trade utes to the extent that last year, of the 1.2 million new vehicles rolling out of showrooms and into driveways, one in every 10 had a tray on the back.

Since adding trade utes to the data in 2020, the emissions-based divide between passenger cars and trade utes has widened. While passenger cars saw a fall in average emissions to 131.1g/km, a 10.5 percent fall compared with the previous year driven largely by electric vehicle sales, the category representing trade utes rose 0.1 percent to 212.8g/km.

According to the National Transport Commission, which compiles the annual average fuel use numbers, only 12 percent of sales in the trade ute segment had emissions averaging below 200 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre, compared with Europe’s figure of almost 60 percent.

What does that mean for boat owners? If your boat sits on a trailer, chances are you use a trade ute to haul it around.

And what vehicles will the government’s proposed efficiency standards frown on? You guessed it, our tow rigs.

The plans are to introduce a new system where car makers will have to reduce the average vehicle emissions across their showrooms, say by selling more zero-emission electric hatchbacks to offset the sales of higher-emission trade utes.

All of a sudden, there could be more trade ute buyers than trade utes as new-car showrooms start to fill with battery-fuelled vehicles. The primal laws of supply and demand say if there are a lot of buyers and too few products, prices will rise. A trade ute is now priced well outside of your budget.

Electric utes are on the way, but don’t provide a like-for-like solution. For instance, the new Ford F-150 Lightning, which has the option of 370km short-range and 500km-ish long-range batteries, will pull up to 4500kg depending on the model you pick. Independent tests with a 1.5-tonne trailer on the back zapped range, reducing the long-range version’s reach to just 250km. An

With some trailerable boats now pushing 3000kg or more wet, that crippled range could easily fall more.

Part of the problem is that an electric vehicle weighs more than a conventionally engined equivalent. For the Ford F-150 Lightning, the lightest version is 2800kg. The heaviest version of the conventional F-150, a 3.5-litre V6 hybrid capable of driving up to 1000km between refills, is just over 2500kg. 

On a carsales tow test, the diesel version of the lighter and smaller Ford Ranger Sport towing 2700kg averaged 16.2 litres per 100km, giving it a range of just shy of 500km. Refuelling it is a matter of minutes at any drive-through petrol station.

In contrast, recharging an electric vehicle is not easy. Filling a battery to 80 per cent via a rapid charger, if you can find one, is fast, but that last 20 percent needed to extract maximum range can take hours. Suppose you’re road-tripping, deliberately filling the battery to 80 percent between recharging stations to get back behind the wheel with minimal lost time, and not dipping below 15 percent battery capacity just in case. You’re looking at around 100-120km of range between each recharge and at least 40 minutes of charge time, if you can find a fast charger.

There is also a problem with recharging infrastructure. Most recharging stations are set up for vehicles to forward or reverse park into a single car space with the recharging unit behind it. If you have a boat on the back, you’re going to have to unhitch it to use the charger or straddle multiple car parks.

Not to mention, drive into a petrol station and you can pull up under cover, wash your windscreen, get rid of rubbish, fill a bottle with water, buy an overpriced snack or drink and pump up the tyres. At a typical EV recharging station, you either sit in your car and watch the grass grow if it’s raining, or lock up and walk off to find a shop.

Australia’s EV infrastructure just isn’t yet ready for the idea that electric vehicles will one day need to tow, let alone be used by more people.

It hurts because Australia’s trailerable fishing fleet is a highly mobile one. Many of us are more than willing to drag our boats to remote waters where the fish are, spending hours behind the wheel to find the best ramp to launch from.

What are the solutions? Well, you can dry stack or hard stand your boat, which locks you into using a single body of water, ensure your nearest boat ramp is only 50km away and therefore well in reduced driving range, sell your big boat and buy a smaller and lighter one that will tow further, or just ditch owning a boat altogether and join a boat share club.

The other option is to go out in the driveway and give your trade ute a wash and a polish. If there’s no affordable or workable replacement, you may need to keep it looking good for a very long time.

But there’s no reason to be pessimistic. Electric cars are only one solution to the problem of how we will move around in the future. They've dominated the industry because they're an easy solution for carmakers that have taken existing, freely available off-the-shelf technology and modified it for their needs. Power plugs are everywhere.

Work, though, continues apace on the alternatives, including for the boating world.

Modifying a conventional engine to run on hydrogen isn’t too difficult. Yamaha has already teased its idea for the future, the 4.6-litre V8 XTO Offshore H2 prototype outboard engine featuring a conventional internal combustion engine with a modified fuel rail that burns hydrogen with atmospheric oxygen to produce the power needed to turn the prop. The only emissions? Pure water.

Refuelling with hydrogen is similar to filling a car with fuel, and the typical range is better than an EV, but not quite as good as a conventionally fuelled engine.

There’s an idea. A hydrogen-powered trade ute pulling a boat with a hydrogen-fuelled outboard engine, both refuelled in minutes from the same bowser. I'd raise a glass of pure water to that.