Bay of Plenty Business News December/January 2018

12 BAY OF PLENTY BUSINESS NEWS December/January 2018
Electric vehicle
revolution slow to
reach the Bay
Tauranga has the dubious honour
of being New Zealand’s most cardependent
city, with a significantly higher
rate of traffic growth than the national
average.
By RICHARD RENNIE
The arrival of electric
vehicles (EVs) is unlikely
to do much about
Tauranga’s traffic woes (see
box story), but they have
received significant media
coverage over the past year or
so as a potential game changer.
In large part, this is because
of promised improvements
related to carbon emissions.
And a massive uptake of EV
does promise to help contribute
to New Zealand’s efforts
to reduce emissions, a requirement
under the 2015 Paris
Accord agreement on climate
change.
Without some major effort
around vehicle emissions,
which accounts for 20 percent
of total losses, New
Zealand will struggle to make
those commitments stick as
the agricultural sector continues
to grapple with livestock
emissions.
MP for Tauranga and
former transport minister
Simon Bridges
But EVs have so far failed
to make a major impact on
local driving habits.
MP for Tauranga and former
transport minister Simon
Bridges has long been an
unabashed champion of EVs.
Despite losing his post, he
remains very positive about
prospects for the new transport
mode and the role Tauranga
can play in leading the EV
charge nationally.
Bridges set a target of
two percent or 67,000 of the
vehicle fleet being electric by
2020. By November 2017,
the country had 5000 registered
based off NZ Transport
Agency data.
“Yes, we are a very car-centric
city, but we do have an
excellent roading network,
and we have bus lanes that
are suitable for allowing EVs
upon, should the council go
that way.”
While in government he
had the law changed to enable
councils to legalise EV use on
busways.
“In talking with Tauranga
City Council, they are very
open-minded about the idea. I
would love to see Tauranga as
the first city in New Zealand
to do that.”
In Auckland, EVs can
already use bus lanes on
motorways operated by the NZ
Transport Agency. Approval to
use council-owned routes is
still in the pipeline.
The Bridges’ family cars
are an Audi e-Tron and a
Mitsubishi PHEV Outlander
(Plug in Hybrid Electric
Vehicle).
He says the savings on
ownership aside from fuel -
I only really hope the government keeps
the changes we made, and in fact pushes
harder. We were just at the point where
government was going to start replacing
its fleet with electric cars, with one-third
being electric by 2021.
which can be the equivalent of
a petrol price of only 30c a litre
- kick in with other incentives.
There is an ACC exemption
of $68 a year, a Road User
Charge exemption worth $600
a year, then lower maintenance
costs through its lifetime.
“I only really hope the government
keeps the changes we
made, and in fact pushes harder.
We were just at the point
where government was going
to start replacing its fleet with
electric cars, with one-third
being electric by 2021.”
But queries to some of
Tauranga’s leading car dealerships
picked up a range of
responses, from the deeply
enthusiastic, to “interested, but
wary” to “not on our radar”
when it came to stocking EVs.
Farmer Auto director Mike
Farmer said he was excited
about what the next two
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