Car share will help reduce emissions

The government’s emissions announcement is a great first step towards reducing emissions per car but more is needed – especially in encouraging people to ditch their private car for other modes such as car share and public transport.

That’s the view of Mevo Car Share co-founder Erik Zydervelt who believes switching the nation’s four million vehicles to one-for-one to four million EVs is definitely not the most efficient ways to reduce transport emissions.

He says a recent Wellington City Council survey shows an average 11.4 vehicles are removed from the roads for each car share vehicle deployed in Wellington, an order of magnitude reduction.

Mevo is moving towards deploying  battery electric vehicles in its fleet, starting with 100 under an agreement with the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA), which the car share plans to start introducing this year and will remove over 1000 vehicles, likely to mostly be internal combustion engine (ICE).

Zydervelt says New Zealand needs to move as fast as possible towards lowering carbon emissions and introducing incentives such as the ‘feebate’ scheme which benefits low to zero emission transport while penalising polluters.

Mevo describes itself as the “world’s first climate positive car share”, meaning that every time a Mevo member finishes a trip in one of its cars the climate is left in a better state than when the trip started.

“We reduce our emissions by charging our hybrid electric models on New Zealand’s >80% renewable grid, and we offset everything else our fleet emits by 120%”.

“This leaves a net deficit in the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere with every kilometre a Mevo vehicle drives.”

All greenhouse gas emissions from the Mevo fleet are carefully monitored, the company working with Ekos to buy carbon credits – the cost built into Mevo’s pricing.

The CO2 offsets come from internationally certified, community-based rainforest carbon projects in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, such as one in Southland where native plants are re-established.

“We’ve always taken a full lifecycle approach,” Zydervelt says, adding that includes vehicle production and shipping.

Mevo expects to make more announcements this year about its sustainable approach to car share and the environment.