Electric vehicles can help reduce fleet age: CRA

The Collision Repair Association is suggesting electric vehicles could play a major part in reducing the age of New Zealand’s vehicle fleet.

The organisation’s general manager Neil Pritchard says record petrol prices and the introduction of Auckland’s regional fuel levy could also help create an environment where incentives are introduced to remove older vehicles from our roads.

“In isolation, an increase in the price of fuel may encourage car owners to look for more efficient vehicles, but with dozens of new electric and hybrid models expected to hit the market in the coming years, more needs to be done to encourage the earlier retirement of some of the less efficient, older models.

Pritchard says introducing electric vehicles through offering incentives has helped reduce fleet age in other countries, like Norway.

“Norway has a population size similar to our own however the number of registered EVs is more than 140,000 and their average age of passenger vehicles has declined to 10.5 years,” he says.

Pritchard says in contrast New Zealand has around 7800 registered EVs and the average age of our light passenger fleet has increased from 14.0 years in 2012 to 14.4 years in 2016.

“There could be a number of factors contributing to the ageing of our fleet – it may be that vehicles are getting more reliable or that population increases have increased demand for low cost models – regardless of how efficient they are.

“At the same time, the average engine size in the New Zealand passenger fleet has decreased from 2218cc (in 2009) to 2204cc in 2016. Vehicles with smaller engines have fewer cylinders, and traditionally have less horsepower and torque. As a result, they burn less fuel.

“What this is likely to mean is that as we reduce the age of our fleet, we will also reduce the average engine size and introduce more EVs onto the roads which helps improve the overall fuel efficiency of our fleet,” he says.

Getting large numbers of older, inefficient vehicles off our roads will also have a positive impact on public health and the environment, he says.

“Often those driving these older models can least afford the cost of the fuel as it increases.

“The Norwegian model incentivises the purchase of new EVs but also helps create a trickle down effect – reducing the average age of all vehicles on their roads,” he says.

Pritchard says Norway also introduced a vehicle scrappage programme which has also been used in countries to accelerate the replacement of older, inefficient vehicles.

“Last year alone this scheme saw more than 136,000 cars permanently taken off Norwegian roads.”

And similar overseas schemes in Europe, US and Asia provide a large cash incentive of up to several thousand dollars and have removed millions of inefficient vehicles from the roads as a result.

Pritchard says the scrappage programme could be funded from the additional GST revenue received as petrol prices continue to increase.