Bridges/Twyford lock horns over EV fleet additions

A spat about Government fleet electric vehicle numbers involves transport minister Phil Twyford and National Party leader Simon Bridges.

While Bridges slams the Government for a “paltry” 135 EV additions to the Government fleet since the Labour coalition took office, Twyford says Bridges and National are “all over the place on electric cars”.

“Our aim is for all new government light vehicles to be zero emissions by 2025,” Twyford says.

“When agencies look to get replacement vehicles, they must aim to buy vehicles that emit 20% less than their agency’s current fleet average. Already Government’s CO2 emissions from light vehicles have decreased over the last quarter. Electric cars are an important part of that and we’re ramping up our agencies using them, with 135 brought into the fleet the last 18 months compared to 224 in the nine years under National.”

Twyford continues; “Unlike the opposition, we’re serious about tackling climate change. We’re currently proposing modest, practical policies that will result in a wide variety of cleaner cars, utes and vans being available and affordable for average Kiwi families and businesses. We’re talking about discounts of up to $8000 for EVs and this will make them more affordable for more people.”

Bridges accuses the Government of doing “nothing on electric vehicles since the election, except propose more taxes”.

“There’s about 15,500 vehicles in the Government’s fleet,” Bridges says. “Prior to the last election, National committed to a hard target of making one third of them electric or hybrid vehicles by 2021, alongside our much bolder ambition of having 64,000 EVs in the country by then.

“National believes electric vehicles are the future. Since our Electric Vehicles Programme launched in May 2016 the number of EVs on our roads has increased from 1406 to 14,867.

“Rather than taxing ordinary New Zealanders into compliance, (associate transport minister) Julie Anne Genter and transport minister Phil Twyford should be getting tougher with government agency chief executives, pushing them to adopt EVs at a faster pace.”

“National supports incentivising people to buy EVs if their lifestyle can accommodate them rather than dictating what cars people can and cannot drive, and slapping them with new taxes.

“Instead, as it has in so many other areas, all the Government wants to do is pile on taxes of up to $6000 a car.”