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Comment by Nition

5 days ago

There must be more to it than this, or we'd have fantastic EV uptake here in New Zealand (we don't - EVs currently only have a 6% market share).

As other siblings have said, it's also very rich and offers mega tax breaks for EVs.

Out of interest, do you mean 6% of cars on the road of 6% of new cars sold last year?

  • I mean sales, specifically new car pure EV sales for 2025. We are only at 3% EVs on the road.

    I think for much of the population a brand new EV is simply too expensive.

    • Tbf a plug-in is just an EV that somehow runs on petrol 4 times a year. In practice the vast majority of driving is done on battery power.

      7 replies →

nz politicians figured out where the tap is to control uptake.. in the name of RUC right now it's tuned so non-plugin hybrid is cheapest, this separates out the price sensitive crowd...

The funny part is, given the geographic proximity and free trade relationship with China, New Zealand could become EV-dominant pretty much as quickly as they want. And as the infrastructure allows - is that a limiting factor?

Without tariffs, the excellent and inexpensive Chinese electric cars might be an attractive option.