[HN Gopher] EV sales plummet after clean car scheme scrapped (in...
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EV sales plummet after clean car scheme scrapped (in New Zealand)
Author : TheAlchemist
Score : 12 points
Date : 2024-02-07 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsroom.co.nz)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsroom.co.nz)
| abraxas wrote:
| That's too bad. At first sight NZ has great geography for mass
| scale EV adoption. Temperate climate and distances not exceeding
| 1000km. Why are they flopping this much? Are there no significant
| savings to be had by switching away from gas to electric
| propulsion in NZ? I'd love to hear some Kiwis comment on this
| situation.
| mattchamb wrote:
| My uninformed take as a Kiwi is that most cars here are second
| hand imports from Japan, so we need imported EVs from Japan to
| pick up.
|
| Also, most people dont buy new cars, and the temperate climate
| means old cars live a long time, so our rate of replacement
| must be pretty low.
| below43 wrote:
| This is the new government reversing some of the things the
| previous government brought in.
|
| I believe NZ EV buyers will be people buying to commute within
| a city or town. Most EV purchases are secondhand imports from
| Japan with limited mileage. While you do see EVs out in the
| wild, they will generally only be the new ones (Teslas, BYDS
| mainly) as there are not many places to charge outside of a
| city.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > Most EV purchases are secondhand imports from Japan with
| limited mileage
|
| While Leaf is still super popular, most are actually new cars
| - mostly chinese and Tesla's.
|
| > there are not many places to charge outside of a city
|
| There are quite a bit to the point that owning old Leafs is
| feasible.
| ls612 wrote:
| When I visited the South Island last year and rented a
| (gasoline) car I was struck by how little infrastructure
| there was even in the towns. And on the freeways there was
| almost nothing by the side of the road between towns every
| 30-50 miles.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if new National government has been
| heavily lobbied by Toyota to push hybrids instead of EVs.
| Introduction of Road user charges means EV or PHEV owners
| frequently pay more for road use than hybrid owners.
|
| They already succumb to tobacco lobby pressures and might even
| offer tax breaks for tobacco's new products when plan was to be
| smokefree soon.
| potatochup wrote:
| The new scheme is significantly worse for PHEVs. They have to
| pay road user charges (a per mile cost, usually limited to
| vehicles like EVs that don't pay gasoline tax) but they also
| have to pay the gasoline tax.
| bogantech wrote:
| Hardly anyone has the money for a brand new car
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| Overall car sales in January were actually a bit up from
| January 2023 - and a bit down from January 2022.
|
| The drop is very specific to EV cars.
| verve_rat wrote:
| A major missing piece of the picture here is the introduction of
| Road User Charges (RUC) for EVs. RUC are a tax levied on diesel
| vehicles in NZ. The idea being that the cost of maintaining roads
| is built into petrol taxes, but many (most?) diesel vehicles
| don't use the roads. Think farm tractors, construction equipment,
| etc. So the road tax is levied on diesel vehicles based on the
| distance they travel. You need to buy RUC credits to pay for your
| use of the roads.
|
| Until recently EVs were exempt from RUC and so were extra cheap
| to operate. Now there is the double whammy of the removal of the
| subsidy and the extra cost of having to pay RUC.
|
| You can argue that this is fair and expected, EV owners should
| pay for the roads they use, same as every one else. But the
| question remains as to whether the trade off of more ICEs vs EVs
| in the NZ vehicle fleet is worth it.
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(page generated 2024-02-07 23:02 UTC)