Not a week goes by without someone telling me my next car will be electric. Will it, really?
What I’d love to know is who’s paying for it? And where are all the chargers along the (so-called) EV network? If people thought getting stuck in a mall carpark on a rainy day was the pits, imagine if we all got electric cars tomorrow.
We’ve been reasonably fast and early adopters of the electric vehicle; a quick drive through a city near you will confirm that. It’s a great story but it comes with a problem. No one thought to knuckle down and build a proper integrated charging network, so the damn things keep moving.
Sure, you can charge at home – if you can get your car close enough to a power point and don’t live in an apartment. But even then, if you want to take a road trip out of town, you’ll need charging stations within easy reach to keep yourself going.
Our problem is interesting – or maybe it’s stupid – in that we jumped at the chance to drive electric, and the clean car discount meant numbers swelled, but no one thought to build official charging stations with equal enthusiasm.
We have a hodge-podge approach right now. Anyone can install them, and all sorts of companies, from the Warehouse Group to Meridian, have started doing so.
New Zealanders like to hit the road and explore but without basic EV infrastructure, vehicle owners may have been sold a lemon. Like a spaceship without the necessary rocket fuel, an electric car on a road trip without a secure charging network is like a Lime scooter with more seating.
Subsidies unplugged
The 2023 list of the most popular cars has just been released and while the Toyota Rav and Suzuki Swift were numbers one and two, for the second consecutive year Tesla was in third place. It’s become glaringly obvious that across 2022 and 2023 as inflation was biting middle NZ, well-heeled Kiwis were paying stupid money, making the most of Labour’s clean car discount by purchasing more than 7000 Teslas.
But with the axing of the subsidy on New Year’s Eve, that will change and EV owners will face paying road user charges now, too. Expect the sale of electric cars to plateau.
What a mixed strategy it was from Labour. It was all about cars and cash but barely a mention of increasing the numbers of public chargers. Who was advising them? Why didn’t someone think a little bit more laterally? Has there ever been a more targeted cash perk for wealthy Kiwis from a Labour government?
More than 7000 individuals in the past two years saved more than $7000 each when they picked up their Tesla. To qualify, the new car must have cost under $80,000, a lot of money when Tesla has just 30 of it fast “superchargers” in New Zealand. They’re 15-minute chargers, but given the numbers of Teslas on the road, the charge will take less time than the wait to use it.
The last thing drivers or car manufacturers need are clueless governments positioning themselves as being in the middle of a climate emergency but dragging the chain on practical action. The Ardern government’s clean car discount undoubtedly put more Teslas on the roads. Heck, even PM Christopher Luxon had to admit, despite making good on his promise to scrap the discount, that he understands his wife may have used it for her electric car – yes, it was a Tesla – but that’s nothing to do with him so he can neither confirm nor deny the discount was used.
These well-off Kiwis didn’t need a discount, they were always going to buy a Tesla. Instead of a handout to the already rich, it would have been more useful in the hands of those on “Struggle Street” screaming out for help as the cost-of-living crisis bites.
But surely if money is tagged for climate change, then the government should have been at the table planning a comprehensive EV charging network. Surely? Maybe? Hopefully? It needs to be treated much like the 2008 broadband rollout, with government money and an agency to pull it all together. Without government investment, the state highway for electric cars is short and sweet.
That’s where Luxon has it right. He wants to build 10,000 charging stations at a cost of $257 million by 2030. Do the maths and it’s five a day. To put it in perspective, there are only about 400 across the country now. But let’s hope the 10,000 figure for charging stations is not his KiwiBuild moment. It shouldn’t be, this one is more doable.
We need Luxon’s EV charging station network to work. In 2021, we came last in an International Energy Agency survey of 28 countries looking at the numbers of cars per EV charger available in a public place. The worldwide average is 8 to 10 electric cars per publicly available charger but we’re languishing at the bottom with a whopping 55 cars waiting at each charging station. Imagine that! More than 50 cars ahead of you at every charger you need to stop at on your journey around the country.
Home charging
The answer to the lack of charging infrastructure is better at home charging.
Yes, National says it’ll build 10,000 public charging spaces during the next seven years, but that’s four a day for seven years - and something tells me it’s a target that won’t be met. If we’re in a climate emergency, then no government to date has shown any urgency or big picture plan to electrify our fleet and to keep the fleet fully charged and ready to go.
Waka Kotahi, or NZ Transport Authority as it’s again known as, has more than 150 cars. It started electrifying its fleet in 2018, half are done, but it’ll take until 2025 to electrify the lot. Seven years to transition 150 cars - for a government with huge procurement ability, and when icebergs are melting at an alarming rate - it seems an awfully pedestrian effort from an agency and institution trying to set an example. Has it been empty virtue signaling or a policy that’s made a difference? It’s likely both.
But we are winging it; part of the answer is with National’s 10,000 chargers - it’s a bold build programme, it will need to be big and scaled up, but sadly not one has been built yet.
Then there’s the cost …
Recently, I went mock shopping for an electric car. In the brand-new market, the cheapest one I saw was an MG starting at $48,000 and the options I looked at went through to a cool $220,000 for a swanky Audi.
They are all bright, shiny and, let’s be honest, probably well out of reach of most Kiwis. Even when there was a clean car discount, who has a casual $50k to drop on a car right now?
Yes, Trade Me has second-hand ones but even the ubiquitous Nissan Leaf will set you back around $15,000 – if you want to go any kind of distance, that is.
If you’re like me and have had a job loss and divorce to contend with, neither put you into a sound financial state. It means any fancy ideas about an electric car have been ditched in favour of paying for the basics first. In fact, it now sits on the bottom of my “wish list” just below a return to the Press Gallery but above bungee jumping.
So, while the electric future is coming our way, the reports that our next purchase will be an EV are simply out of touch with the current reality for everyday people.
We won’t all be driving electric in 2030 or even 2035, despite claims New Zealand will have more than two million electric cars by then. Right now, most Kiwis can’t even afford the cost of the carpark, let alone the car.