Drop in new EVs with no Tesla April shipment

New battery electric vehicle (BEV) registrations plummeted from March to April, but that’s attributed to a lack of Tesla deliveries last month.

The Ministry of Transport monthly EV registrations show 949 new BEVs in April compared with 2466 in March – down 1517, mainly because Tesla generally only makes shipments to New Zealand every three months with the next batch due in May or June, though ongoing COVID shutdowns in Shanghai could well delay deliveries further.

Conversely, plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) that also use petrol jumped from 631 in March to 1227 in April (up 596) while there were no PHEV diesels registered last month compared with one in March, the MoT says.

Collectively, PHEVs and BEVs in both March and April were close to 20% of the new passenger car segment.

“We can expect to see more EVs currently sold in the UK and Europe to become available in our market. We are starting to see this happen, for example with Opel choosing to set up in New Zealand later this year and announcing that its entire product range will be either be zero or low emission vehicles eligible for rebates,” the MoT states. 

“We are also expecting to see New Zealand’s first electric ute become available later this year.”

Overall, April 2022 registrations of 9756 vehicles were down 25.6% (3377 units) on the same month in 2021 and are 3.4% up (1853 units) on 2021 year-to-date figures.

A total 42,522 EV registrations was recorded by the MoT to the end of March, with April’s registrations pushing that to nearly 45,000.

The Motor Industry Association (MIA) says that, as anticipated following the introduction of the Clean Car Discount fees – operative on April 1, overall vehicle registrations resulted in the weakest April since 2015.