Here's the headline: "NZ will be dumping ground for high emission cars".
That was a claim from an EV lobby group. I wonder why they would say that?
Chris Hipkins said, or was allowed to say, that we had one of the highest uptakes of EVs in the world and the Government stopped it.
Now, let's deal with fact and context. The Government in their announcement over car import charges has a mess on its hands and it's a mess because the previous Government invented a set of rules that don't work, didn’t work and were never going to work.
They gerrymandered a market and that is rarely smart economics, or politics.
Hipkins' reference was to his subsidy scheme for EVs when the taxpayer gave thousands to middle class Tesla buyers.
Now, was it one of the highest uptakes in the world? I don’t know, but it certainly helped sales because discounted stuff and stuff paid for by other people tends to help sales.
If the Government offered to renovate your bathroom, I reckon bathroom renovations would explode.
As for a dumping ground? How about less snobbery and more acceptance that New Zealanders are allowed to buy the sort of car they want? A lot of people don’t have $50,000-80,000 (or even $30,000 if you go Chinese) for an EV.
Even if they do a lot of people simply don’t want an EV – some people want a hybrid and that’s fine.
But you direct people through taxes towards outcomes at your peril. The climate obsession has upended markets and driven a level of complexity through charges that the Government literally doesn’t know how to get out of.
They have importers bringing cars in they can't sell. What's the point of that?
People will buy what people will buy. This isn't China where you are told what to do and when you are cajoled, allegedly through tax and fees, look what happens.
The biggest irony is supply is an issue. The importers can't get the stock they need. Why not?
Well one reason is because we drive on the opposite side of the road than a lot of countries. And the other is that manufacturers are pulling back on production of the cars that the Government scheme wants you to import.
Why are they doing that you ask? Because they can't sell them!
Obsession, interference, meddling and stupidity will trip you up every time.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
Now, let's deal with fact and context. The Government in their announcement over car import charges has a mess on its hands and it's a mess because the previous Government invented a set of rules that don't work, didn’t work and were never going to work.
They gerrymandered a market and that is rarely smart economics, or politics.
Hipkins' reference was to his subsidy scheme for EVs when the taxpayer gave thousands to middle class Tesla buyers.
Now, was it one of the highest uptakes in the world? I don’t know, but it certainly helped sales because discounted stuff and stuff paid for by other people tends to help sales.
If the Government offered to renovate your bathroom, I reckon bathroom renovations would explode.
As for a dumping ground? How about less snobbery and more acceptance that New Zealanders are allowed to buy the sort of car they want? A lot of people don’t have $50,000-80,000 (or even $30,000 if you go Chinese) for an EV.
Even if they do a lot of people simply don’t want an EV – some people want a hybrid and that’s fine.
But you direct people through taxes towards outcomes at your peril. The climate obsession has upended markets and driven a level of complexity through charges that the Government literally doesn’t know how to get out of.
They have importers bringing cars in they can't sell. What's the point of that?
People will buy what people will buy. This isn't China where you are told what to do and when you are cajoled, allegedly through tax and fees, look what happens.
The biggest irony is supply is an issue. The importers can't get the stock they need. Why not?
Well one reason is because we drive on the opposite side of the road than a lot of countries. And the other is that manufacturers are pulling back on production of the cars that the Government scheme wants you to import.
Why are they doing that you ask? Because they can't sell them!
Obsession, interference, meddling and stupidity will trip you up every time.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
2 comments:
Next environmental disaster- dealing with ev batteries that have reached their end of life.
Give me petrol any day!
These green technologies like solar and wind and ev’s are actually worse than the coal and gas and oil when you consider the full lifecycle
Mike has left out the key point when he says "the most important point is supply is an issue". That sentence needed to be longer, and to conclude "at a price New Zealanders can pay". The problem is price, not the side of the road. And you can't decarbonise without some cost. Costs will emerge strongly where the carbon is - transport in this case. The message is we are fairly poor as an OECD country. Our car universe has been created by cheap Japanese imports based on their car market idiosyncracies and for 35 years this has masked how costly transport would otherwise be. The Japanese market has given us a huge ongoing car subsidy to which we have become addicted. Reducing CO2 from cars is revealing that.
I agree the last Government's scheme was stupid, and especially inequitable as low income people subsidised purchase of higher income people's Teslas (how hypocritical was that from a Labour/Green government?). A better scheme could have been implemented that began a transition to less CO2 from all our cars - in its absence, the current Govt has folded to pressure essentially from people who cannot afford to replace the vehicles they have while making gains against CO2 emissions.
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