I had the rare pleasure of riding in a couple of electric cars over the holidays, a BYD Atto 3, and a Tesla Model 3. I love the futuristic feel of these cars, the minimalist dashboard and hi-tech displays. They appeal to the techie in me. The quiet whir of the electric motors just adds to the effect. But, despite the blitz of advertising in 2023, I resisted the urge to buy an EV.
It didn’t make economic sense, despite the lure of the clean car rebate which – until the incoming government axed it on December 31 – promised a discount of up to $8000 on the EV models I was eyeing up. I’ve got a perfectly good 2016 petrol-powered Nissan that I’d get very little for on the second-hand market and which I’ll probably drive until it dies.
Hundreds of thousands of Kiwis are in the same boat, wedded to petrol for many years to come but feeling very self-conscious about it, and resentful every time we approach a petrol pump.
There are now 73,000 fully electric light vehicles and a further 30,000 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) on our roads and the EV fleet has reached the 2% level that the former government always said would bring an end to the exemption on road-user charges.
About one in four new cars sold last year were electric or hybrid vehicles, according to the Ministry of Transport. But this year, the lack of subsidies and the end of the road-user charge exemption will see the buoyant appetite for new EVs recede, especially given the sluggish state of the economy.
This isn’t a local phenomenon. Australia is also phasing out subsidies, and in the US, pure EV sales have slowed, causing major car makers such as Ford, General Motors and VW to delay new models. Instead, they will favour hybrid vehicles in 2024, which continue to sell well. It makes little sense to me to buy a hybrid, which complicates things with an electric motor and an internal combustion engine. But it is the current answer to the range anxiety that still puts off would-be EV buyers.
A standard EV battery in a new model will typically get you 350km on a full charge, maybe 400km if you pay more for a long-range model. EV charging infrastructure still isn’t pervasive enough here to make regular fast-charging visits convenient. The new government’s pledge to build out the public charging network to 10,000 stations by 2030 will definitely help.
But two other factors are needed to really get EV uptake humming this decade. The bestselling vehicle in New Zealand last year was the Ford Ranger ute. It’s a gas guzzler popular with tradies, farmers and small business owners all over the country. Only 1.5% of utes sold here last year were electric. We need decent electric options in the utility category. Ford aims to debut a hybrid model of the Ranger this year. But all of the major ute makers, Toyota, Mitsubishi and Nissan among them, need to up their game and come up with an electric ute that performs well.
Ultimately, we also need price parity between electric and petrol vehicles. Currently, an EV costs 25-30% more. Elon Musk still talks about a low-cost Tesla model, unofficially dubbed the “Model 2″, which would sell for US$25,000. But Ford last year revealed its EV unit was losing the equivalent of US$36,000 on every vehicle sold. We know we need to go electric, but in 2024, big barriers to EV adoption remain.
