For passenger cars, the electric alternatives are here. We should move immediately to prohibit the import of fossil fuel powered cars, with minimal exceptions.
I don't want to be an ideologue here. Maybe there are some people in the outback for whom electric cars are not a realistic option. Maybe there are some very specialised cars for which there is no non-fossil fuel alternative. Obviously, we can't turn around ships already on their way to Australia with fossil fuel powered cars. And we will probably need to take cars already in the process of being manufactured to Australian specifications. However, within weeks, the overwhelming majority of cars imported into Australia should be electric. Or use some other non-fossil fuel technology.
Passenger cars are the low-hanging fruit and not just in terms of buying them but also in terms of supporting them with electricity infrastructure. Their use is often discretionary and they are not usually in use around the clock, so with the right electricity pricing regime, it is often easy and advantageous for car owners to charge them when there is spare capacity in the electric supply.
Banning fossil fuel powered passenger cars is not extreme.
In 2024, Ethiopia banned the importation of petrol and diesel cars, not for environmental reasons, but because they have plenty of hydro-electricity and fuel imports were costing the country billions.
See this article in the Guardian from September, 2025, for the Ethiopian story.. There are 115000 electric cars out of a total of 1.5 million. Charging stations are still scarce outside the capital.
Buses and small trucks within urban areas is another sector where electric versions are starting to appear. There isn't as much scope for operators to work their charging times around the best times for electricity supply, but some. I believe this is also an area where we can realistically prohibit new fossil fuel powered vehicles. Again, there are probably exceptions.
The area which is often overlooked is long haul freight. This area is hard but also critical. It is this area where oil squeezes send inflationary shock waves through the economy because so much of what we buy needs to be transported by truck for long distances.
It is a hard area because those trucks cover long distances and while it is possible to align charging times with driver rest times, provided the infrastructure is there, aligning them with spare capacity in the electricity supply is harder.
So, the questions becomes, how do we put ourselves into a position, where we don't need any more fossil fuel powered long haul trucks? What actually happens in countries where non-fossil fuels are already being rolled out with various technologies is that they start with one route. In Australia, this could be Sydney to Melbourne or some other busy route. I believe that once we have a route electrified, we can stop importing fossil fuel powered trucks. The fossil fuel powered trucks could be relegated to routes which are not yet upgraded. We would then need to keep upgrading freight routes to keep pace with fossil fuel powered trucks being retired.
There are different technologies for trucks which don't use fossil fuels. What they tend to have in common is that they require a lot of electricity. And to supply that electricity, there would have to be upgrades to cabling and probably also more generating capacity.
I'll briefly list some possible technologies here. I'll have separate pages for each technology where I will go into more detail and describe to what extent it is use in the real world. Given that the need for supporting electricity infrastructure is similar for different options, it might make sense to support two technologies for not that much extra cost compared with supporting just one.
My assessment, which I am certainly not claiming to be authoritative, is that we should go with hydrogen fuel cell technology and one or both of fast charging and battery swaps. I don't believe there is much future in trucks drawing power directly from the road.
The following could be a good plan to get the ball rolling:
Significant infrastructure investment will be required to support long haul trucking without fossil fuels. If necessary, the Federal Government should postpone the fast rail project, which is not nearly as urgent.
I described synthetic fuels in the technology overview. Theoretically, the internal combustion engine can be kept alive in a post fossil fuel world. However, for those fuels to be produced in a sustainable and scalable manner, direct air capture (DAC) is required. This technology is currently too expensive to be a reason to continue to allow civilian vehicles with petrol and diesel engines to be imported.