The Electric Vehicle Council (EVC) has recently released a new report exposing how it claims outdated regulations are sidelining the country’s cleanest, cheapest freight technology, at the moment it says Australia needs it most.
The EVC’s ELECTruck report reveals that Australia’s fleet of zero-emission electric trucks is parked for up to half of every day, not because the technology is unviable, but because freight curfews written for diesel engines apply equally to silent, electric vehicles.
The EVC claims this amounts to up to $150 per vehicle, per day in lost productivity, which represents a 15–25 per cent productivity hit on every electrified route.
The Council claims that this adds up to $4 billion in lost national GDP every year from heavy vehicle access limits, which the Productivity Commission has flagged as outdated.
“Australia has invested in the cleanest, quietest delivery technology ever built – and then locked it out of the very hours where it would make the biggest difference,” said the CEO of the Electric Vehicle Council, Julie Delvecchio.
“A rule designed to solve a diesel problem is now blocking the very technology that solves it. This is the most Australian policy failure you’ll ever see , but the fix costs nothing,” she said.
The Council pointed out that the report lands as Australia confronts its worst fuel security shock in decades.
It says that one fifth of the world’s diesel supply is still disrupted and that the Federal Government is spending $2.55 billion on fuel excise relief in just three months, with ELECTruck arguing that cutting red tape could make a huge difference right now.
“An electric truck can displace up to 45,000 litres of diesel per year,” said the EV Council’s senior policy officer for heavy vhicles, Cameron Rimington.
“Scale that to 50,000 trucks (which is achievable) and that’s 2.25 billion litres of diesel no longer imported, worth almost $5 billion at current prices, and that’s money kept in the Australian economy instead of flowing offshore,” Rimington said.
“This isn’t about waiting for new technology, the trucks exist, the operators want them, the energy is here and the only thing missing is policy that’s caught up to reality,” he said.
ELECTruck has outlined five immediate reforms that can be delivered within twelve months and which will cost taxpayers very little
These include point of sale incentives for electric trucks citing that in Australia it can take up to four years to apply for government funding for an electric truck while in New Zealand it claims it takes only four minutes
It has called on noise restrictions to be lifted for silent electric trucks, which it believes will unlock double-shift operations and remove trucks from peak-hour congestion.
The Council also called for a national charging roadmap that includes heavy vehicles, citing the fact that the United Kingdom has committed £1 billion to heavy EV charging infrastructure while Australia is still at square one.
It has also asked that the “payload penalty” should be fixed by offering a two-tonne mass concession to offset the battery weight on electric trucks, which is already standard in the EU, UK and US.
It has also asked that roads be opened up by reclassifying electric trucks so that they’re not banned from the council roads where most deliveries happen.
“This isn’t a climate cost. It’s not a transition cost. It’s an economic cost we are choosing to wear, every year, for no good reason,” Delvecchio said.
“The trucking industry runs on two per cent margins and every dollar lost to inefficient regulation flows straight through to higher grocery prices, higher building supply costs, higher retail costs, and when trucks stop, Australia stops,” she added.
The report follows the May 2026 Open Letter to Australian Governments signed by more than 45 industry leaders — including Volvo Trucks, Daimler Truck, IKEA, Tesla, JET Charge, ABB, DHL, Fortescue, ANC, Kempower, Energy Futures Foundation, Intium, MyNu Energy, Plus ES and Duka Tec — calling for coordinated national action.
