Electric vehicle (EV) powerhouse Trevor St Baker says Australia could miss out on tens of thousands of jobs without a specific “buy local” commitment in the government’s EV strategy.

Founder of the St Baker Energy Innovation Fund, Trevor adds that while the Federal Government’s new Electric Vehicle Strategy would help uptake and research to some degree, a focus on homegrown tech providers was a necessary element needed in a future policy.

The comments come just days after the fund’s major investment Tritium opened an Australian first charger testing facility in Brisbane, which is expected to boost local manufacturing.

“The race to an electric transport transition is well and truly on, but Australia needs to keep in step with the rest of the world,” Trevor explains.

“Government support by way of open tendering for modest grants on public fast-charging infrastructure has great potential to build jobs in this space, but it’s important to make sure there are strong ‘buy local’ requirements to ensure taxpayer money is returning to Australian manufacturers.

He says that Australia is already a world leader in the manufacturing of EV chargers with the likes of Tritium. If we do this right, the transition to EV could ensure that the high-tech jobs created by the companies continue to grow: “We can’t afford to miss this opportunity.”

The St Baker Energy Innovation Fund, one of Australia’s largest investors in the EV space, already supports more than 450 high-tech jobs across Australia through its investments in several leading e-mobility companies including Evie Networks, Tritium, TrueGreen Mobility and Applied EV.

Earlier this year, the Brisbane based electric charging manufacture Tritium completed a transaction that saw it valued at almost $2 billion ahead of a proposed NASDAQ listing.

“A focus on local manufactures and companies as part of the Electric Vehicle Strategy could build on that legacy and grow the number of jobs in the sector from the hundreds to the tens of thousands,” Trevor says.

“We support a high-skilled workforce of experts across science, technology, engineering, and maths, as well as business professionals.”