The government is facing a judicial review over its decision in July to weaken exhaust emissions standards, as the Better New Zealand Trust took issue with how the quick consultation process was conducted.
To recap, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced New Zealand would align its vehicle emissions reductions standards with those of Australia. The idea is to ensure a steady supply of affordable vehicles.
Here's what Brown said at the time:
The government supports the Clean Car Importer Standard to ensure that New Zealand has an affordable mix of clean vehicles. Following a comprehensive review into the Standard we will be making key changes to ensure the Standard strikes the right balance between reducing transport emissions while ensuring that New Zealand’s have access to affordable vehicles.
Advice provided to me by the Ministry of Transport found that under current targets set by the former government, CCS penalties are forecast to amount to approximately $800.6 million of cost to consumers purchasing a new car in 2027 which is around $5,549 per vehicle.
The additional cost figures are from the Motor Industry Association (MIA) of New Zealand, as quoted in the Ministry of Transport (MoT) CCIS review document.
MIA was one of four car industry organisations consulted for the review; the others include the Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association (IMVIA/VIA), the Motor Trade Association (MTA) and the Automobile Association (AA).
None of the four organisations above were in favour of the CCS that was phased in from December 1 2022 by the former government. However, they were the only ones asked to submit on the review of the CCIS, Better NZ Trust's Kathryn Trounson told interest.co.nz.
The trust was not asked to submit, but did so anyway; zero-emissions vehicle organisation Drive EV wasn't invited either for the consultation round. The court document says Tesla and BYD, the two biggest suppliers of EVs in the New Zealand market, were not consulted.
Trounson is clear on the purpose of the consultation strategy:
"The MIA and IMVIA had vested interests in weakening the standards so they could keep on doing ‘business as usual’ and not having to charge the heavily polluting vehicles with the additional fee - the dog whistle calling this fee a ‘ute tax’ was designed to enrage the farming community and it did that perfectly!"
Having repealed the Clean Car Discount by the end of last year which hit EV and hybrid sales hard and saw them decline by two-thirds, the CCIS changes would further impact the number of low and zero-emission vehicles in New Zealand.
The BNZT says the government's own modelling would result in 39,000 fewer EVs and 19,000 plug-in hybrids being registered by 2035. This in turn would lead to an increase in emissions of 0.6 to 0.9 megatons by 2035, and 1.2 to 1.9 MT by 2050.
The backdrop here is that transport accounts for around 40% of New Zealand's energy greenhouse gas emissions. Without reducing vehicle emissions, New Zealand is unlikely to meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit the average global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
"New Zealand was one of the last developed countries to adopt a regulated CO2 emissions standard. In 2019 when the standard was publicly consulted on, the vehicles being imported were among the most fuel inefficient and highest CO2 emitting in the OECD," the MoT admitted.
The Better NZ Trust might be a new name to many; its members include EV dealers, car parts chain Repco, charger network ChargeNet, the Interislander ferry company and electricity retailers Orion and Unison.
It is now seeking a High Court order to quash the Minister's decision to weaken the emissions standards regulations.
"The Trust wants to make the public aware of the fact that NZ will miss its Paris climate targets by a country mile with this weakening of the regs – but the Coalition appears unmoved by that prognosis – and is going full steam ahead to keep fossil fuels at the centre of our energy strategy. As I am sure you are aware, even if we stopped pumping CO2 into the atmosphere tomorrow, the lag time for that to lower the CO2 levels are huge," Trounson said.
TBNZ doesn't buy the government's argument that there's an insufficient global supply of EVs and that prior emissions standards would push up car prices.
Figures from analyst firm Gartner released this month estimate that EVs in use by 2025 will grow by a third, reaching 85 million globally. Gartner has New Zealand's installed battery EV and PHEV base at 140,989. By 2025, that number is expected to reach 182,596 with nearly 135,000 being BEVs.
Australia is expected to have a sizeable electric vehicle fleet by 2025, at 488,061, Gartner figures say. In both countries, the numbers show marked increases, with 49% in Australia and 30% in New Zealand.
As it is before the court, Minister of Transport Simeon Brown would not provide further comment on the CCIS case beyond saying the government wants to ensure an affordable mix of clean vehicles, which is why the Standard was aligned with Australia as the two countries are effectively the same car market.
Has the government completely abandoned a low and zero-emissions transport strategy? Not quite.
There are at least some government policy initiatives aimed at reducing transport emissions.
For starters, the government maintains it will stick to the Net Zero 2050 goal, and a modestly sized low emissions heavy vehicle (LEHV) fund with $27.5 million has been set up.
One flagship policy is to build out the nation's EV charging network. By 2030, the government aims to have 10,000 charging points installed, with the policy costed at $257 million over four years.
Brown explained the difference the additional chargers would make to improve access for EV drivers
"New Zealand currently has approximately one charge point for every 90 EVs (battery electric and plug-in hybrid). Most comparable countries have one public charge point to less than 40 EVs (eg, Germany has one to every 25 EVs, the United Kingdom has one to every 31 EVs, and Australia has one every 68 EVs," Brown said.
As of April this year, the number of charging points nationwide is thought to be 1250, with 21 being installed every month. Whether or not it is feasible to up that number by a factor of eight in four years remains to be seen.
It is possibly in the light of the promised 10,000 EV charging network that gentailer Genesis taking a 65% majority stake in ChargeNet should be seen, however.
There will be co-investment from the government in the EV charging network build out, similar to the UltraFast Broadband (UFB). Brown said officials will work with the Electricity Authority to address barriers such as connection costs along with making it easier to get consent for the points.
"Our Supercharging EV Infrastructure policy is a shift in the government’s primary role from funder of public EV charging infrastructure to the facilitator that enables private investment through removing regulatory barriers. This will include a cost-benefit analysis framework to inform decision-making, as outlined in the National-ACT coalition agreement," Brown said.
Interestingly enough, although the majority of EV charging is done in owners' homes, the government is not currently looking at providing incentives for electricity suppliers to provide higher current connections to premises.
Presently, New Zealand households have a standard allocation of 63 Amps; a 7 kilowatt wallbox can use 32 A of that, which has led to electricity suppliers like Vector and WEL Networks to call for managed EV charging to avoid overloading the grid.
Will the above initiatives make a dent in the country's transport emissions?
In 2021, the MoT noted that New Zealand had a vehicle fleet that's over 4.5 million in size; that equates to 899 vehicles per 1000 people. This is one of the highest levels of vehicle ownership in the world. It is unlikely that measures to reduce the number of cars for private use would be welcomed, but can we maintain the composition of the fleet as-is, and hope to meet our emissions reduction commitments?
59 Comments
Thanks Juha. Let's hope the discussion section doesn't descend into the usual drivel when EVs are mentioned. Would be great if we got some sensible discussion and debate where this current government's policies are taking us - and whether NZ Inc.'s word can be trusted when they sign up to an agreement.
Perhaps you could help that non-drivelling, by watching this:
Tales from the Carbon Pulse | The Great Simplification
and seeing if you still think EVs are part of the solution.
So many folk shut down the scoping (as the link mentions) to suit their narrative.
EVs are very much part of the solution, here are alternative links on abundant energy sourcing.
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/in-a-first-caltechs-space-solar-powe…
https://www.space.com/japan-space-based-solar-power-demonstration-2025
You might know how this works in practice: How do we get this power to the cars where they are currently parked during the day? Only the under utilized cars are sitting at home next to the solar panels and chargers.
How much will it cost to place and supply chargers at every parking space? How do you protect them?
Most cars sit at a workplace or car park building - these can also have solar added. When they are there all day, you can charge them via a 230v outlet which adds around 10km/hour. The sockets can be controlled via your ID card and metered if needed - fairly low tech and cheap.
(Note: It's common in Nordic countries to have power at every parking space to allow you to plug in over winter to keep the car heated so they don't ice over.)
This is government subsidies for EV users. There is no money in it when it competes with charging at home, how could you charge more for an unreliable service. Either it does not work in winter or massively inefficient in summer. If you back it up with the grid it now during peak usage.
At 6 hours (60km) of charging a day this would fail for most people during a cloudy winters week. And by my quick research a car parking space of solar panels operating at rated effectiveness could roughly supply this amount of power so it does not scale to multi story well.
This is not a solution to powering the nations fleet of EVs.
What's your estimate on the payback here? You get nothing on cloudy days, you can't charge more than overnight charging and most EV drivers will never get in the habit because you can never rely on it to be an every day thing.
Just imagine a large number of people parking their flat EVs in a car parking building expecting to get them charge so they can drive home and then it's unexpectedly cloudy and no one got charged. You would need to bring generators in and leave them overnight.
Sure if you don't care about the cost you can make this "work" but it's stupid. Just get the people with solar at home to buy a battery bank to recharge their and maybe their neighbours cars from.
People seem to think EV's need constant charging. well maybe they do if you drive 400 k's everyday.
Solar panels on car parks are ideal , providing shade and cover from rain.
Even if neither is possible , a EV owner could have an array on his house that pumps power into the grid that is used elsewhere to charge other EV's.
"Even if neither is possible , a EV owner could have an array on his house that pumps power into the grid that is used elsewhere to charge other EV's."
Even at slow charge power draw the grid will not handle this. Every car/employee needs 10A for a home plug-in charger. There is not the spare transformer capacity for this on the commercial side. Most desk jobs probably average lets say less than 500W of power now they need to get 5 times more to their site.
"Solar panels on car parks are ideal , providing shade and cover from rain. "
For the money a council will spend trying to do this every solar user can just buy batteries to charge at home. Edit: it's 20K for a decent bus shelter (i think this a good lower bound estimate), 5k for panels plus inverter and probably another 10k to make it theft and vandalism proof.
If the 'roadblock' to electrifying our fleet and clean energy is a lack of ev chargers then that isnt much of roadblock. The technology already exists. Scaling up isnt difficult either and it doesnt have to be done all at once. Solar performance consistently improves at +3%/yr and the same with batteries.
Its not 'perfect' but oil isnt perfect either.
Passenger cars are only 8% of emissions. how much fossil energy and mineral resources are we going to use just to get to there, and then in 30 years time we have to do it again - it's a meme.
What about the other 92% of emissions - baseload, factories, steel, cement, bitumen, agriculture, heavy transport, plastics.
Even if we can scrape the required fossil fuel and mineral resources out of the ground to replace what we have with replaceable electricity, then what?
It's pie in the sky wishful thinking which all leads back to coal. A Steampunk dystopia under an ashen sky.
I think most people are missing the big picture, in that private EV ownership is only a stepping stone towards transport-as-a-service, which will result in a dramatically smaller global vehicle fleet.
I'm not convinced by this argument - humans are selfish - I do not want to wait to go to the supermarket, or share the journey with a stranger who might want to overshare their problems. Buses and trains are fine for mass PT, but a fleet of enough 'cars' roaming around, ready to transport us all to where we want to be, when we want? Tech bros' wet dream, IMO; trying to sell the "no-need for you to own transport" when we do via your credit card.
Planting trees and not harvesting them just for the carbon to be put back into the atmosphere would reduce carbon (they are made of carbon which came from the atmosphere, ergo they are carbon sinks). The carbon offsets from overseas though are almost always garbage.
Cutting them down and building with the good parts sequesters carbon while using the other parts a fuel means other fuels can stay in the ground. Rinse and repeat ...
But it's really just a drop in the ocean. Meanwhile, our government brings the day of reckoning ever closer.
Thanks for nothing Simian Brown et al.
Remember. NZ is a carbon sink. We would have to burn lots More fossil fuel to reach net zero (a lot more). We are sweet. No need for useless EVs. Look for most of this nonsense about Paris accord and other stupidity (like degrowth) to disappear over the next few years. Degrowthers are already labelled as idiots in most other places, but like normal some NZers still believe their lies (eh PDK). We are a few years behind.
lol, do Prime Ministers have 20 year terms, because that’s how long Toyota have been dropping money into hydrogen cars and right now their progress is going backwards.
The few hydrogen filling stations globally have been shutting down due to high costs and maintenance woes, and Toyota can’t even give its Marai vehicles away. EVs by contrast can now get as far as hydrogen cars (km range), are a proven technology and are in mass production.
Hydrogen is just daft for anything except maybe global shipping.
For Trucks and Maybe shipping it makes sense. Maybe even some cars if you REALLY want to get emission zero. But probably 70% of cars could go electric with no range anxiety an the other 30% should be PHEV or HYBRID. We have a 200km range ev and a 400km range ev. I rent or borrow a car for maybe 5 days a year that I need for a big roadtrip where there are no chargers. Im happy to do that, maybe some arnt. But even if you werent, most familiies are 2 or 3 car families. 2 out of 3 of those cars could easily be electric. That is going to be cheaper, way faster, and much more efficient than any hydrogen vehicle.
I dont think every day folks realize hydrogen stations sometimes explode.
Rental cars are quite expensive and generally everyone wants to holiday at the same time.
My budget was $5k and Im not going to buy a leaf with 60km total range when I can get a mondeo that does 1000km.
There are many people who do not commute in personal cars and take shared electric transport.
Burning hydrogen as a combustion fuel makes little sense to me as the issues with storage and distribution are significant.
But hydrogen fuel cells - where hydrogen is used to create electricity through a chemical process - makes some sense, in certain situations.
For example, the Japanese encouraged their use in large buildings. Not sure if that's still the case. It apparently worked reasonably. The theoretical maximum efficiency of a fuel cell approaches 100% .. an internal combustion engine maxes out about 60% ... so you can see why burning hydrogen is a bit of a waste unless the heat generated by combustion can be used effectively. But heaps more work required to get even close to 100%.
But the holy grail here would be > surplus renewable electricity -> to hydrogen through the electrolysis of water -> hydrogen storage (the battery) -> hydrogen to electricity near point of use via a hydrogen fuel cell.
But heaps more R&D to do to make such a system efficient enough to compete with the cheap fossil fuels that are slowly cooking us.
Is our government backing any R&D in this area? ... [crickets] ... Significantly more electricity generation? ... [fast track some solar farms]
Chris - no, it does not
I did ask you to get informed, before commenting further. Please watch that link.
Yet....
Wittering on about surplus renewable energy. Sorry, but come on. It's 'rebuildable', not renewable. Dams, windmills, PV. All limited by the Laws of Thermodynamics, entropy included.
How can folk choose not to know stuff, but still think they have a right to opine?
I am quite informed. Thank you.
Might I respectfully suggest that much of the stuff you love to parrot does not take full account of the huge amount - a staggeringly huge amount - of energy that is - every day - entering our energy systems? And from where does it come?
The Sun !!!
Those portable hydrogen fuel cells look like a total scam product. They are far too small to propel a car any sort of distance.
By volume, weight, mass, whatever measure, hydrogen is less efficient than petrol. Sure you can compress it but that requires a compressor (powered by...?) and the walls of the containment cylinder have to be seriously thick to contain that pressurised hydrogen. Thick walls means a heavy container with either little internal space or large external dimensions and those Toyota cells ain't large.
Of course we could use carbon fibre. It worked so well for Ocean Gate's Titan submersible.
The existing EV charging network is pretty good. The market is providing, no need for the Government to interfere. All we need is a fair system where everybody pays for the roading network that they use and for mitigation of externalities.
It's in the Government's interest to do this, there is a big bill coming for not meeting our Paris Agreement committments domestically.
SimonP - please watch that link upthread.
Then come back and see if you reiterate...
Energy underwrites money. There will never be a fossil-energy equivalent, and we have yet to prove that we can build rebuildables, using rebuildables. Meaning the last fleet of them built during the last of the fossil resource, will be the last.
The 'Paris bill'will never be met, by any nation. They will all attempt the continuance of BAU - indeed to grow it. That cannot be done using rebuildables. The joke is that fossil energy is a finite resource, half-gone. So BAU is a temporary arrangement.
The clean car discount was one of the few ideas the previous government had that I liked.
People are funny, they'll rush to get a new phone with double the battery life, and quote 2011 Nissan Leafs as reasons they won't ever get an EV. That's like saying they're worried about how the original iPhone held up from 2008.
The rest of the world is charging on, regardless. Petrol is always going to be expensive now because OPEC knows what the world can pay, so we will once again be left behind. Proud, ruggedly independent, low wages, high cost of living. God speed.
Analyst firm Gartner, which I quoted in the story, doesn't see BEV/PHEV sales as "flat to declining" worldwide over the next few years. Particularly not in China and Europe.
| 2023 Installed Base | 2024 Installed Base | 2025 Installed Base | |
|---|---|---|---|
| BEV | 32,628,884 | 45,872,824 | 61,860,183 |
| PHEV | 13,402,907 | 18,159,560 | 23,283,006 |
| Total | 46,031,791 | 64,032,383 | 85,143,189 |
The market is performing counter to the forecasts and projections of governments, manufacturers and other analysts. BEV sales in Europe are down over 40% YoY. This despite subsidies and heavy discounting.
China is a bit of an outlier, as they're prepared to burn cash being the world leader in BEV production.
There's a marked plateau going on with BEV sales that's over and above other sectors of the auto market. So likely the product lineup needs to evolve for that to reverse.
Don't believe the Facebook comments
In Europe, EV sales rose 4.2% to 0.3 million units, thanks to a 24% jump in the United Kingdom and gains in Italy, Germany and Denmark
Global EV sales up 30.5% in September as China shines, Europe recuperates | Reuters
I'd have to go on Facebook to see them.
You have to be careful when looking at EV sales data, because much of it doesn't distinguish between BEVs and PHEVs.
According to JATO Dynamics’ data for 28 European markets, 753,482 new cars were registered in August 2024.
This is a 16% decrease from the 899,881 units registered in the same month last year and the biggest year-on-year drop since June 2022.
Battery electric vehicle (BEV) sales in the 28 European markets fell significantly year over year to 125,000 units, a 36% decline.
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