Wednesday, July 21, 2021



A promising start

The "rebate" half of the government's feebate scheme to lower transport emissions came into force three weeks ago. And it looks like its had an immediate effect, with two months worth of EVs registered in the first 19 days alone:

More than 1300 electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles were registered in the first 19 days of the Government’s new “feebate” policy taking effect.

Though a small fragment of the overall light vehicle market, that number was higher than the two months of electric and plug-in hybrid sales that preceded it, and about triple the daily average for the first half of 2021.

[...]

According to Ministry of Transport figures released to Stuff, 1357 electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids were registered from July 1 to July 19 – including both brand-new vehicles and newly imported secondhand vehicles.

We'll get full monthly figures here early next month, but this is a very promising start. While the numbers are still low overall, and sometimes distorted by government procurement, it looks like the policy has roughly tripled EV uptake. The policy was expected to see 4,000 more EVs than the status quo, and it looks like they're well on the way to that. And when the fees on dirty vehicles kick in, the incentive for a clean one should be even stronger.