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In the first month since the introduction of the Clean Car Discount, sales of SUVs and double cab utes rise strongly and NEV share falls. And those buying electrics are doing so at the luxury end

In the first month since the introduction of the Clean Car Discount, sales of SUVs and double cab utes rise strongly and NEV share falls. And those buying electrics are doing so at the luxury end
Ford Ranger Raptor

Sales of up-market cars is the feature of June new car sales. 75%+ of transactions were for SUVs, and most of the EVs being sold are to very well-heeled buyers. This category is still a fad for the rich.

As has been the case for the year to date, the overall new vehicle market continues to be logistically challenging with worldwide shipping capacity is still a long way off pre-COVID levels and manufacturers are still grappling with a worldwide shortage of semi-conductor chips.

Within these constraints the New Zealand market, year to date, continues to perform exceptionally well.

June 2021 registrations were 15,135 units compared to 11,514 units for June 2020 and 13,952 in June 2019.  The month of June is the third largest on record and the first six months of 2021 is the strongest on record.

The introduction of the Government's Clean Car Discount saw a slight reduction in the sale of PHEVs but BEV sales were reasonably strong. Hybrid sales are not yet eligible for a rebate and these remain strong. Year to date there are 1,641 BEVs registered, compared to the same period last year there were only 611 BEVs registered. (BEVs are pure battery-only electric vehicles. PHEVs are plug-in hybrids. Hybrids get their battery power from an on-board ICE engine.)

There were 342 pure electric vehicles, 222 of them Teslas, and another 69 were Mercedes, Porsches, Jaguars, Audis, MGs and Minis.) 52 PHEV’s and 1,113 hybrid vehicles were also sold in June, a total of 1507 new energy vehicle (NEVs) and a share of 14.6%. This is less than the 16% share in May.

Sales of commercial vehicles are still dominated by double-car utes. Of the 4829 sales in June, 85% of them were these double-cab utes or pickup trucks. Many (most?) would have been diesels.

New vehicles sold

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Source: NZTA
Source: NZTA
Source: NZTA
Source: NZTA
Source: NZTA
Source: NZTA
Source: NZTA
Source: NZTA
Source: NZTA
Source: NZTA

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100 Comments

Well-healed EV buyers? Have they been injured? :-)
When does the rebate/tariff kick in? Are people rushing to buy double-cab diesel utes before the tariff kicks in? That would be a major unintended consequence / perverse incentive.

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The tariff kicks in from 1st January 2022.

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Fixed. Thanks.

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As usual the poor bear the brunt of Labours climate policies. No problem they won't be able to afford a car so can use the amazing public transport system.

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I am interested at what age these brand new BEVs are on-sold. ie How long do people hang onto them before offloading them to unsuspecting buyers when the batteries have lost a good amount of charging ability. Juice them up then sell them to the naive.
At least with a petrol car you can see if it smokes, oil in water, water drops after test drive, engine overheats, condition of oil etc. You can even do a compression test if the seller has confidence in his car. A juiced battery? Well maybe some day there will be a way of identifying this rort.

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That's quite funny, because all you've done is highlight all the extra things that can go wrong with ICE vehicles.

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You can most things an ICE relatively cheaply. No so if you have to replace a battery pack. It’s goodbye car!

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Most EVs come with a pretty lengthy battery warranty. BMW and Tesla for instance come with 8 year battery warranties.
So long as you stay away from old Nissan Leafs you’ll be fine.

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Is the warranty transferable?

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Really? Just say the words mechatronics unit around an Audi/Volkswagen owner and watch them wince.

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As long as you know what you're doing it is far easier to change batteries, or individual cells or packs in an electric car. Think how long a mechanics apprenticeship takes and the tooling and diagnostic equipment required. Most mechanics these days won't even rebuild a top or bottom end, they'll just buy a new one and bolt it on. Ever bought a new engine for a car?

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Of course my message is that its easier to tell if you are buying a dud...

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You run a health check on the battery, very easy relatively.

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Google 'juicing'

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Introducing: The Walking Bus

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the "poor' can buy a s/h Leaf , or a Prius ( most clocking up 400ks plus on the first battery , ask any Taxi Driver) , or any economical small petrol car. Where they have failed , i think , is getting the old gas guzzlers off the road. Plenty of "poor"people in our neighbour hood driving old commodores etc. The aim should be to up the fuel efficency of the whole fleet , not just those that can afford new cars .

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the "poor' can buy a s/h Leaf , or a Prius ( most clocking up 400ks plus on the first battery , ask any Taxi Driver) , or any economical small petrol car. Where they have failed , i think , is getting the old gas guzzlers off the road. Plenty of "poor"people in our neighbour hood driving old commodores etc. The aim should be to up the fuel efficency of the whole fleet , not just those that can afford new cars .

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It will trickle down, those falcons and commodores were once new cars.

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the "poor' can buy a s/h Leaf , or a Prius ( most clocking up 400ks plus on the first battery , ask any Taxi Driver) , or any economical small petrol car. Where they have failed , i think , is getting the old gas guzzlers off the road. Plenty of "poor"people in our neighbour hood driving old commodores etc. The aim should be to up the fuel efficency of the whole fleet , not just those that can afford new cars .

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Clearly this is the rather odd month between the announcement and when it kicks in. People trying get their utes and suvs in before, and why buy a subsidy-eligible ev just before? So of course it's heavy on utes, suvs, and high end EVs. Too early to draw conclusions yet.

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The tariff doesn't apply for another 6 months yet.

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Delays on many vehicles. Usually longer on Hikux and Ranger

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The EV subsidy is already in place. If I was going to buy one I'd do it now, before they put up the base prices to counterbalance this subsidy.

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Exactly, we picked up an MG EV on Saturday - had to wait until the 1st of July to register it in order to receive the rebate.

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I should also point out at 40k after the rebate and very low running costs I wouldn't consider it a purchase reserved for the wealthy. Not for the poor obviously but were they ever in the market for a new car?

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I should also also point out that maybe low interest loans on new cheap EVs would be a good idea in return for taking gas guzzlers off the road?
The operating costs make some EVs better value but if you don't have a house to borrow against the finance costs could be pretty onerous.

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Wait for the July sales figures, since the rebate only applies to cars registered after 1st July.

My sister took delivery of a Tesla Model 3 last week, and ended up missing out on the rebate because the car was registered (by Telsa) back in May before the details of the scheme were announced. She says that Tesla looked into doing everything they could to claim the rebate, including using a provision that allows a car to be un-registered within 28 days of registration so that it could be re-registered on 1st July, but government officials put the kibosh on that.

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Thats a useful post Thankyou.

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Wonderful. More people taking bus and less cars on the road. At least I'm expecting less bass while waiting at the lights.

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The thing a lot of folk miss is just how much fun EVs are. A mate of mine is rueing that his neighbour’s Tesla Model 3 is faster to 100 than his Aston Martin! Some top end EVs can get to 100kph in under two seconds. Not sure if this is the sort of thing Mr Shaw envisaged — we’ll need roads like runways! There won’t ever be fewer cars, just better ones.

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Having good acceleration is safer in many situations. Overtaking can be done quicker with a lower top speed during it.
i have a car which handles very well but is gutless so overtaking is really difficult especially when people speed up when I indicate to overtake.... as they do.
Or my bugbear. Slow vehicle lanes. Which very very few slow vehicles use.

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EV's great if you see a politician on a pedestrian crossing then.

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EV’s are superior in virtually every way except the price tag and the recharge time (if you get one with decent range it isn’t such an issue). It is just the fact that everyone can’t afford to spend $60k + to get one.

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I used to have a diesel ute and it was cheaper to run and seemed to use less fuel per km than my normal petrol car. I thought modern diesel engines were relatively good these days. YOu can also get petrol utes which probably similar fuel usage to medium sized SUVs. But one problem is that utes have gotten a lot larger and higher over the last 10-15 years.

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And there you have the reason these things are just crazy, just looked up the spec of the Ford Raptor its weight is 2332Kg so besides being as aerodynamic as a brick it weights as much as a few pallet loads of them. Its simply not possible to produce a low emissions and economical vehicle with this kind of spec.

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Dumbest comment I’ve seen in a while. Have you even looked at the economy and emissions figures of a raptor? Modern diesels are becoming more efficient, not less.

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I think the point is they would be even better if they weighed half as much and were aerodynamic (i.e. not a mostly unnecessary massive ute).
Modern small cars run off a barely oily rag these days.

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Yea they would be if they weighed less but then that also means they can tow or carry less. Also, “necessary” is subjective. Love it when Wellington public servants rant on how all anyone needs is a leaf while they sip their soy latte made from African coffee beans shipped halfway round the world lol

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I'm waiting to see what will tow my 3 tonne caravan. Who needs a boat in Auckland where there'll be nowhere to fish.

No problem Nashy only wants high end tourists.

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go for a Ssangyong, rexton , or rhino .Or wait for their ne model , voted ute of the year in Britain .

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go for a Ssangyong, rexton , or rhino .Or wait for their ne model , voted ute of the year in Britain .

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go for a Ssangyong, rexton , or rhino .Or wait for their ne model , voted ute of the year in Britain .

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Hey, guess what?! Did you New Zealand grows both Coffee and Cacao Beans locally? Amazing right?! Latte sipping agricultural technologists to the rescue!

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Well that’s nice to know that all coffee is locally grown. Otherwise the Prius warriors would be hypocrites right?

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How many coffees makes up the difference between the footprint of a small leaf vs a large diesel SUV? I'm a little rusty on the conversion rates.

Unless your argument is that to even consider criticising inefficient cars, one should exist purely on food from their own garden and wear clothes woven from their own hair? Very hard to live an entirely virtuous life in today's society.

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My issue is that EVs are not yet able to replace ICE ones, yet those wealthy office folk continue to lambast anyone not driving a Prius or Tesla.

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This brings up the other issue: the size of boats! The number of boats around with 150hp engines on them. Ridiculous!
40 yrs ago my fathers seacraft with a 50 on the back was absolutely fine for fishing. A cortina would tow that fine.

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More people = more consumption means that people have to travel further to catch anything. It’s a population problem, not a tech one

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If it’s necessary then pay the price. Lots of things I do are necessary, I don’t expect them to be subsidised. Trashing the planet for free is pretty much the biggest subsidy anyone can get.

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Electric vehicles won’t save the planet. Less consumption might, however I suspect we’ve already over populated the planet

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I looked them up just now, 8.2l/100km and emissions of 212 gCo2/km. Such a beast will definitely attract a levy from next year, even if the separate emissions target for utes remains. Also saw that the Raptor costs $85,490 + orc. What was that about well-heeled EV buyers again?

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The issue I see is that most electric pickup trucks are made for the US market, unless government waives the rules on left hand drive cars consumers won't be left with any options in this bracket. It's our fault, we didn't signal early enough to the auto industry that we intended to apply taxes/rebates based on emissions.

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Wow, I have an early 60's Chev truck, it weighs 2 tonne, and it has steel in it. I have a very late model engine in it, 12l/100ks on the open road.

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Not sure why the right wingers are wishing this scheme fails. If it does fail we either need to forget about doing our part towards climate change altogether (which I believe would have long term ramifications including economic ones) or do something even more drastic such as bans, taxes, reallocating road space, carless days, etc.

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Sounds great!

Maybe we could do that as well.

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Not sure how these IPCC levies are doing our bit. They just remove the funds to help. So it's a double whammy. Not only do we fire billions to IPCC we then have to find the funds ourselves so the impact is increased.

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I’m not a right winger, but the scheme seems like it is giving money to the rich, and taking it from hard working trades and rural folk. The difference it will make to our share of global emissions will be diddly squat. Too many subsidies in this country go to people who don’t need them.

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Where have you been: hard working trades are rich! I’ve had a few quotes recently and seemed like they must be bringing in a very good pay cheque per year, 200k + easily. I would consider myself fairly well off and I have never bought a new car in my life so they much richer than me. And remember that much cheaper small cars are also getting the feebate, not just electric.

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Haha “seemed like”. Seems like you don’t know the market value of a skilled tradesman + materials

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It is a bit different when it is a work vehicle. I double they are earning $200k + unless they are employing people in which case they are businesses. My issue with the scheme is that there aren’t any real alternatives for utes etc

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Utes exist that do not attract a fee, they are just not sold in NZ due to our lack of emission standards e.g. Ford Ranger EcoBlue double cab sold in the UK is 188gCO2/km, under the 192g threshold for a fee.

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Subsidies for the wealthy, taxes for the poor. Just the way nature intended.

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No just Labour

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Taxes for the poor? Huh? Who? When?
You know what will happen with the upcoming congestion charges. Just wait..... A massive carve out for who the govt deems to be the "poor".

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You know all those poor buying brand new rangers, gotta feel sorry for them.

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Poor people aren't buying brand new Ford Raptors. More like taxes for the chavs

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Lots of complaint for what is really a minor price signal which won't drive much change in behaviour. Massive structural economic changes are required for NZ to meet it's Paris Agreement obligations and Net Carbon Zero by 2050. The howls of outrage will be enormous. Add in changes to water policy, the RMA, definition of Significant Natural Areas, and there is going to be a lot of protest.

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Lots of entitled people unfortunately.

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EVs are going to be for the rich for a very long time, as the manufacturers have zero incentive to lower the prices while Govts around the world are heavily subsidising them. In Europe the subsidy is EU15k-20k per vehicle. Our measly $8k will do nothing to make these cars affordable to the average buyer. And even if there were no subsidies, the manufacturers just have to wait until the ICE bans kick in, then consumers will have no choice at all, so the car companies will milk it as long as they can, before genuine competition for market share starts to provide an incentive to bring costs down.

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EVs will only be for city dwellers. The nationwide charging infrastructure is non existent so you can't get far at present.

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What a load of rot, one look at the maps on charge.net and you'll see most of the places people travel have charging pretty well covered, so long as you aren't talking about travelling intercity in a old nissan leaf with dying batteries. A few places like east cape and the far north could do with a few extra chargers.

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Wait until the numbers increase. So will the massive queues to charge

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And so will the number of chargers. It would be a stunning failure both of the market and of government if a large imbalance developed.

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I agree that the Leaf (and other early/cheap EV's) range make them ideal inner city commuter vehicle, but your comment about charging infrastructure is incorrect. You only have to look at the Charge.net map (https://charge.net.nz/map/) to see how wrong you are!
I don't live in the city, my daily commute was 120km and I did it for 5 years in a $37k EV only charging at home overnight. Saved many thousands over that time, even if I have to buy another battery in a couple of years, I'm still ahead financially when compared to using the previous Ute over same period.

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Depreciate that battery!

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EVs will get cheaper as the tech improves. Then new companies will enter the market, as well as traditional car makers focusing more on EVs.

For now the EV subsidy in NZ will mainly benefit people in the mid to high wealth brackets. That's OK because the more important long term benefit will be creation of charging infrastructure.

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Most people buying them will also have a big diesel SUV in the garage.
And, they will charge them at home 95% of the time.

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Will they get cheaper as the cost of extraction and demand increases. How much Li and Co do we need to replace the world's ICE fleet.

Oh thats right, the poor don't need cars

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I'm not sure that's how economics work. I looked up the equivalent rebates in some other countries: UK £2,500, France €6,000, Germany €9K, Ireland €5K, Sweden SEK60K = NZD10K. Some countries have other incentives as well but overall it's the fuel efficiency standards that do most of the work and I expect that's what we will see in NZ too if we get the setting right.

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It's funny that MG is listed there along with Mercedes and Porsche as a high end car. MG is now a Chinese auto maker. That said I did look up their EV offering, the MG ZS EV and watched a couple of videos. It actually looks quite good and good value.

This pdf of theirs claims an $8,625 rebate on the 50k price:
https://files.digitaldealer.com.au/mgmotor/specifications/zsev.pdf

Do rebates apply to PHEV vehicles? Because they seem more appealing to me, never having to worry about running out of charge. MG do one of those too although the Mitsubishi may have better resell value for the same price.

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Yes PHEVs are covered along with low emitting ICEs like the Honda Jazz I believe. Although with the Outlander I've seen a bit of talk about the batteries on the earlier ones degrading and having very high replacement costs. Gotta do something about recycling/repurposing batteries - repurposing batteries that are depleted but still hold a bit of charge are useful to distribution networks apparently for load shifting

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I've never seen answered the question of how CVTs in hybrids handle towing. The serious reviewers do not recommend towing with a CVT, so it's either pure EV or ICE

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I object to the headline on the front page ‘…only for the rich.’

First of all, one of the purposes of the policy is to reduce carbon emissions. This occurs regardless of who is owning the vehicle and benefits everyone.

Second, the other purpose of the policy is to drive scale leading to mass affordability. I’m sure there was a point where microwaves were only for the rich. We need rich people to buy overpriced niche products to move things through the early adopter stage and help achieve scale and production efficiency. Some rich dude buying a $150,000 EV is doing you a favour whether you like it or not. You’ll never get the $50,000 EV without that $150,000 EV. Tesla is proof of that in action.

So let’s give the class warfare side of this a rest. EVs are great and one day there will be an Everymans EV (arguably the MG one is already there are $40k after the subsidy).

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So what I’m reading from this comment is stop being poor and thank a rich person that they can afford an EV on our behalf. Nice one

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That’s actually exactly what I’m saying. Because the goal was for someone to buy an EV and emit less carbon. It doesn’t matter who buys it for the policy to be successful.

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Awesome. Sounds like we should be restricting it to people who live outside the central suburbs and who don't have access to rapid transit then.

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That's a problem though because the average 'rich' person will be trading in a low emitting, efficient-for-its-size ICE whereas the poor people will be keeping their high emitting, inefficient-for-its-size older car, so the effect is less than it first appears on paper

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There are over a million cars bought in NZ every year and we have the highest rate of vehicle ownership in the OECD. This affects everyone, vehicle emissions are a collective issue. The benefits of fewer ICE sales are shared by everyone, especially by growing the base of support for ending fossil fuels.

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What happens to these trade in cars? Do they disappear to the same place as rental houses when sold?

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I have just bought a European hybrid as I am not ready for a bev car. The importer gave me a pretty big discount including the equivalent of the governments $5750 rebate. It is the best car I have ever had. Quiet , smooth and very quick even on just electric. Charging it every night in the garage on a three pin plug is as easy as charging the phone. The next day I have 40-50 ks depending on the temperature. I do 20 to 30 ks a day so it suits me. Electric only unless going out of town and then it’s hybrid. I have had some nice powerful European cars but this hybrid is smoother and quieter than all them and surprisingly quick when you need it. Go and have a test drive. Any hybrid on the market will blow you away.

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I don't think I've ever met anyone thats owned a hybrid , that wouldn't buy another one .

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I don't think I've ever met anyone thats owned a hybrid , that wouldn't buy another one .

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I seem to have developed a stutter

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And like magic this Government policy is raising the price of all cars.

The tax on Ford Ranger starting Jan 1 will increase in cost to purchase.
Already Japanese exporters of EVs have increased the price of cars into the NZ market increasing their cost of purchase in NZ.

... EV dealerships in Auckland are witnessing a surge in demand, but are also sounding warnings about limited stock sending prices skyward.

..... Johnston also imports EVs from Japan, and he said he believes sellers in Japan are increasing the prices of their EVs in response to the subsidy.

https://i.stuff.co.nz/motoring/evs/300335451/mad-rush-as-ev-sales-surge…

The funniest thing would be for Ford to offer NZ discounts to trade customers. Or people start grey imports & used ex lease imports...
Imagine that. This policy would then effectively raise the price of EVs and reduce the price of Rangers (because there is great demand for them).

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Even if the exporters raised the price to fully offset the subsidy, it means they would have an incentive to sell the cars to NZ instead of elsewhere if they can get a higher price for them.

When you consider that many other countries already have subsidies of some sort, this would be more of a re-levelling than anything - like with the movie business, if you don't give a tax incentive to film in your country then movies simply don't get made there, because everyone else is giving a tax incentive.

When you consider that very few brand new EVs have been available to buy in NZ except for the last 18 months - Nissan never sold the gen 1 or 2 leafs here - it suggests that our lack of subsidy until now likely suppressed the interest of the car makers in selling here.

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Interesting view in the economics of selling EVs into NZ, and making an additional case for all EV cars to be sold at a higher cost to New Zealanders.

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I'm not defending it as a good thing or saying it should be this way, just that this is how it is. Just like movies tax credits are a rort, the fact is if you don't give them, you don't get movies made in your country.

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All the waffle about emissions and cars. Why the govt isnt upping rail infrastructure and getting trucks off the road is beyond me. Has there been any study around this ? Diesel emissions arent exactly healthy.

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Especially as transport is within the ets.
Doubleup.

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The last budget had major spending for rail . Seems to be a constraint on how quickly they can improve things.
Rail is around 4 times more energy efficient than road .

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