'Bit embarrassing': EV advocates on scrapping of clean car standard

An electric vehicle advocacy group is calling for consistent, cross-party policies to get more battery-run cars and charging infrastructure on the road.

Drive Electric presented its State of the Nation report on Wednesday at Parliament, which said the switch to EVs could reshape the country's energy system.

Its chairperson Kirsten Corson, told Morning Report, there had been massive changes to policy in the past couple of years which had impacted the entire automotive industry.

She said the government considering scrapping the clean car standard altogether, months after slashing the fees importers pay to bring dirty vehicles into the country, would make New Zealand the only country in the OECD not to have one.

"Which is slightly embarrassing," Corson said.

Corosn laid out the economic case for switching to an EV.

"If you're driving an EV it's going to cost you around $900, including your RUC's a year, if you're driving an equivalent petrol car it's going to cost you around $2200 to fuel up your petrol car a year."

However, she said making the savings widespread could only be realised through cross-party policies and expanding charging infrastructure.

"The average Kiwi can't afford to buy a new car, so we'd like to see policies, like a salary sacrifice model, we have to have demand and supplyside policies and a bipartisan approach."

It was about seeing cars as batteries on wheels, Corson said, and the opportunity to change the entire energy system.

Green List MP Celia Wade-Brown said she was interested to hear about the electrification of maritime transport during the presentation - a historically highly polluting industry.

"I'm also excited about the resilience prospects and being able to use vehicles to charge homes, to be able to charge tools..."

She agreed with Drive Electric that a switch to EVs would require bipartisan cooperation across energy, infrastructure and transport.

But New Zealand First List MP Andy Foster warned there were many aspects to consider in such a comprehensive strategy.

"It is a very complex collection of different parts of our economy..."

Foster said he did not think his party would like the idea of a subsidy - especially as EVs become more affordable.

"The challenge with subsidies is someone is paying that subsidy. It's not free, and of course what we saw before with the clean car discount is that there were two groups who ended up paying for people to have Evs -one was the taxpayer and the other was the people who had been charged for other vehicles... particularly the tradies and the farmers."

Drive Electric's report pointed to the success of other countries with rapid EV uptakes as proof that combined infrastructure, transport, supply and demand side policies could work to electrify transport.

Corson said the report had shown there had been a shift in why people were buying EVs and it no longer an environmental strategy but an economic one.

She said in 2023, one in five new cars being sold was electric, but this collapsed in 2024 and had been slowly rebuilding since. A big spike was then seen in March this year due to the Middle East conflict.

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