this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Ah that's a double blow for carbon emissions, two reasons EVs are less attractive.
PHEVs are an interesting case. I'm not sure what a fair system looks like for them, since different use cases will use larger or smaller shares of petrol/electricity.
Non-plugin hybrid are also interesting. If the intention of petrol tax is road maintenance, how come a hybrid gets to only pay half as much because it's using half as much fuel? Plus, hybrids are the heaviest. Leafs and Model 3s aren't that much heavier than other cars of a similar size, but hybrids are heavier than petrol or electric cars.
Are we looking at a future where all vehicles need to pay road user charges?
It's certainly a complex future I fear. We have a PHEV which I look at positively from an overall km/L basis - but because we live 20mins or so 'from town' we don't do a lot of electric-only running. It would seem we may be penalised for that in the future - hit with both the petrol taxes and the electric RUCs.
Interestingly, having just come back from Auckland, I was astounded at the number of Tesla's on the road - given their price point, it would seem that the EV rebate is going to people who arguably don't need it
Can you explain what you mean by this? There are a lot of used and imported Tesla's being sold now. There are 105 used Tesla's showing on Trademe right now and most won't get the rebate. A freshly imported second hand Tesla that hasn't been registered here yet will get the same $3450 rebate as a $15k freshly imported Leaf. Tesla's styling hasn't been changed at all for some time, so unless you know what you're looking for it's difficult to tell if the Tesla you saw is a 6-7 year old model or a brand new one.
I thought the goal of the rebate is to drive low emission vehicle adoption, with EV's being the newest technology the higher end of the market is where it would be happening first. You can still get partial rebates on imported used Hybrids and EV's depending on that model's emissions.
My point is that Tesla falls firmly into luxury car price range - so rather than incentivising 'average' people to choose an EV equivalent of say a Toyota Corolla, which will then trickle down as it's sold and resold, we're getting an overrepresentation of Merc and BMW buyers choosing Tesla. Perhaps that's to help do their part to reduce emissions, perhaps as a status symbol - it arguably doesn't matter. What does matter is that it appears we're seeing more of the luxury EVs than 'affordable' EVs - and that's going to matter deeply when it comes to adopttion by the masses.
I think the issue then is in terms of pure zero emission vehicles in the last few years Tesla’s have had the most value in terms of technology, range, battery longevity. This is slowly changing. Even now you can get a new MG4 at $40k after rebate which is firmly in the same price range of a new Corolla. We’re starting to see more and more lower priced EV’s coming out from the likes of BYD, Opel, GWM. The real problem is that we’re waiting for the other manufacturers to start releasing EV’s to market.
Have a look on evdb.nz and you can see that there are quite a few models now that are in the 40k range after rebate which is within a new Corolla pricing. More affordable new EV’s are coming, it’s just that the major manufacturers are playing catch up, while Tesla has been doing it from the start, which is why you’re seeing more of them.
I'm less surprised. Down around Wellington, there are Teslas everywhere. But also, there are shiny clean $80,000 utes everywhere too.
I think it's important to understand that the point of the rebate is not to subsidise the less fortunate to buy new cars. The point is that when someone who was already going to buy a new car looks at the options, they find EVs to be at a comparable price point to the petrol equivalent. It's to incentivise new cars to be electric, because new cars become the second hand cars of tomorrow. No one buying a new car needs a subsidy, but if it's not there then people are more likely to choose petrol options.
There was another scheme planned aimed at making EV use affordable for low income drivers (social leasing scheme), but this was canned at the time Jacinda stepped down and the govt did a reset of projects.