‘They’re no longer a tool of trade’: Polestar boss picks a fight with tradies by calling out tax breaks on utes such as the the 2026 Mitsubishi Triton, Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux

The Managing Director of Polestar Australia, Scott Maynard, has lashed out against those who would complain against the government’s tough New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES). He said tax exemptions disproportionately favour heavily polluting utes and aren’t necessarily in the public interest.

Maynard said the removal of benefits for high polluting vehicles, such as dual-cabs, was more important than re-introducing incentives for EV buyers. He disagreed with Mitsubishi’s CEO, Shaun Westcott, who said the industry had “too many sticks and not enough carrots” when it came to selling electric cars in Australia.

Maynard said exemptions from the Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) and Luxury Car Tax (LCT), which disproportionately advantage high-polluting dual-cabs, could be the reason utes are amongst the best-sellers in Australia.

“They disproportionately serve the sale of dual-cab utes and not what I would consider to be a far more progressive style of transportation, which is electric vehicles," said Maynard.

“If you consider that three of the top five selling cars in Australia for the entire first half are dual cab utes, we’ve now got one and a half times dual-cab utes to tradie ratio, it doesn’t make sense.

“They’re clearly no longer a tool of trade. I don’t think it’s a difficult jump to make to put that on the fact that they’ve enjoyed tax let-offs since 2000. So I think it has driven to spur whole iterations of those models which have veered away from them being a tool of trade.

“Wouldn’t it be great to see benefits like that for vehicles, which are cheaper to own, easier to live with, and benefit the environment?”

Maynard said some of the views being espoused weren’t “in the best interests of the Australian buying public, the environment, or the economy”, when asked about the position of the industry body, the FCAI, which recently spoke out against the current NVES and some manufacturers, in particular, Mitsubishi, Mazda and Toyota.

“I haven’t seen the FCAI say or do anything ,which would suggest they are any more progressive when it comes to the electrification of the Australian vehicle fleet. Most of the comments I’ve seen out of the FCAI would suggest the opposite is true. The fact they’ve railed so hard against the NVES and tried to water it down, that didn’t sit well with our brand mantra.”

Polestar along with Tesla spectacularly quit the industry body, which is funded by memberships from Australia’s most popular automakers, after it continually attempted to weaken the government’s new emissions standards, which effectively bring our country in-line with the European emissions regime on a relatively short timeframe.

“We are now one of the last remaining developed counties which either don’t have legislation or do much to encourage the lowering of vehicle emissions, so the fact we’ve taken this long is not something we should be proud of, and the fact that we’re doing something about it now is.

“The fact it doesn’t suit Mitsubishi doesn’t really surprise me.”

“If most of these brands are able to service these requirements in all the other markets they compete in there’s no real reason why they can’t do it here, and I don’t think they need to make the sort of scaremongering comments that they’ve made to do it.”

He went on to add that misinformation enabled and sometimes promoted by some voices in the industry was having a bigger impact on the uptake of electric vehicles rather than the removal of incentives, but that recent shifts in the market seem to indicate customer demands are slowly changing.

He said of the idea that a mid-size SUV may be the top seller in 2026 as utes come off the boil showed demand is changing.

“So I think there’s a bit of a disconnect in the continued rhetoric that suggests we should be watering those standards down or not incentivising the sale of vehicles that clearly the public want,” he said.

It’s worth noting that like Mitsubishi’s recent commentary, Polestar also has everything to gain from tax changes, which might advantage some of its higher-volume selling models, particularly the Polestar 2 that has fallen slightly from favour in the past few years as new and lower-cost electric options have flooded onto the market.

Polestar will double down in this volume direction in the latter part of the decade with the new Polestar 7 which has become a particular focus for the brand.

Expected to be based on the same platform as the Volvo EX30 and Zeekr X, the smallest and most affordable Polestar model will be built in Europe rather than China, and isn’t due in Australia until 2028.