Aussie puts NZ in its EV and clean energy dust

New Zealand risks being an also-ran in the EV and clean energy revolution with the Australian federal government just announcing a nearly A$2 billion investment package

in future technologies to lower emissions.

That includes a new $74.5m Future Fuels Fund helping businesses and regional communities take advantage of opportunities offered by hydrogen, electric, and bio-fuelled vehicles.

Australia’s Electric Vehicle Council welcomes the package which it says will offer businesses grants for EVs, creating a secondary EV market for the wider public as businesses electrify and upgrade their fleets.

“We know businesses are waking up to the many benefits of electrifying their fleets and these grants should be the incentive they need to break with combustion engine tradition,” EVC chief executive Behyad Jafari says.

“Businesses tend to recycle their fleets every few years so if they are incentivised to purchase new electric vehicles today we should see them starting to appear in numbers on the used car market soon.”

Little has been done in New Zealand to incentivise EV uptake with the country likely to fall short its initial target of 64,000 EVs on the road by the end of 2021.

New Zealand has a general election on October 17 and the present Labour-led coalition government has only released a clean energy plan

which is short on any detail around encouraging EV uptake.

The opposition National Party has, however, recently released an EV plan

which would see EVs exempt from fringe benefit tax (FBT) until 2025 to encourage fleet uptake, and a road user charge (RUC) exemption extended to at least 2023 under a National government.

It also includes setting a target of 80,000 EVs on the road by 2023 (four times the current level), allowing EVs to use bus lanes and high-occupancy lanes, and aims to have a third of the government light vehicle fleet in EVs by 2023.

The party’s EV package estimates the fiscal impact at NZ$93 million over four years. This includes NZ$55m over four years in lower revenue from exempting EVs from FBT and NZ$38m over four years in electrifying the Government fleet.

National says it will make EVs cheaper and reduce transport emissions.