A month ago,New South Wales (NSW) Transport Minister Andrew Constance had criticizedAustralia’s slow transition to EVs, emphasizing the need for bigger incentives. Well, that’s old news! Two days ago, the NSW government announced an ambitious $375 million plan for battery-powered cars, theSydney Morning Heraldreports. The government hopes that with this plan EVs will make up more than half of new car sales by 2030. Specifically, stamp duty will be removed from EVs that cost less than $58,580 by September this year, and a $2,253 rebate will be given to the first 25,000 vehicles sold in New South Wales for under $51,069....

Telstra, an Australian telecom company has launched one of the smartest Facebook applications to date that allows you to leave a voice message, which is then posted to your wall. For all the interaction on the Facebook wall, audio has never been something that has been featured and this fun campaign opens up a new way for people to communicate with each other. The agency, DDB who created the campaign, called the app “Blurtl,” and it’s essentially an audio status update for Facebook....

The largest design crowdsourcing site, 99designs, today announced that it has received $35 million in funding led byAccel Partners. Angel investors include Michael Dearing (eBay), Stewart Butterfield (Flickr), Dave Goldberg (Survey Monkey) and Anthony Casalena (Squarespace). The company, which was founded in Melbourne in 2008, was a bootstrapped effort that was profitable before taking the funding, employing 27 staff in Melbourne and San Francisco. 99designs is aSitePointcompany, spun out of the latter’s forums....

Australians could’ve saved $716,320,000 in fuel if CO2 legislation had come 3 years earlier How did Australia get here? The most efficient versions of vehicle models offered in Australia areconsiderably less efficientthan similar vehicles in other markets. Australia could increasingly become a dumping ground for the world’s least efficient vehicles with sub-par emissions performance, given our lack of fuel efficiency standards. This leaves us on a dangerous path towards not only higher vehicle emissions, but also higher fuel costs for passenger travel and freight....

New South Wales Transport Minister Andrew Constance declared his support of the EV transition, stating that the Australian government should provide bigger incentives, theSydney Morning Heraldreports. The minister proposed several measures, including subsidizing car parks with charging stations, waiving stamp duty, and giving access to transit lanes for drivers of electric cars. He also added that the government needs to pick a “drop dead” date for the ban on petrol and diesel vehicle sales....