They argue that, of course, we’d all be better off in electric vehicles - which we supposedly would have been if the Government hadn’t cancelled the subsidy at the end of 2023.
Now let me tell you why it was not a mistake to cancel it, why what’s happening right now actually proves that, and why the lovies saying this are wrong.
What’s important in this argument is being specific about who would have owned those electric vehicles if the Tesla subsidy had continued.
It wouldn’t have been workers living all the way out in PÅkeno, driving into the city, it wouldn’t have been people out in Silverstream commuting into Wellington, it wouldn’t have been solo mums trying to make ends meet - they can’t afford new EVs.
It would have been well-heeled people living in central-city leafy suburbs, getting eight grand knocked off the price of their nice new cars. Those are not the people who need help when fuel prices shoot up.
So if we were going to do something like this - if we were going to repeat some form of Government help - wouldn’t it be far more useful to take the $620 million that helped nice people into their nice cars and instead redirect it toward people who are poorer?
The proof that we didn’t need that subsidy up to this point is in what’s happening right now. I told you earlier: BYD sold 80 cars in New Zealand on Saturday alone. They sold 800 cars in Australia on the same day. That is happening in New Zealand without the subsidy.
Which tells you this - when rich people decide they want themselves a nice EV, they will go and buy it without Government help. They don’t need it.
They just have to want EVs - and they didn’t want them before because it didn’t stack up until fuel prices went up.
Now look, I do think there’s a place for Government help in this crisis if it gets worse. But it’s not to help rich people buy new cars.
It’s for poorer people - the people who will actually be stung by rising petrol prices if they keep going up. So no, it was not a mistake to cut the subsidy.
Eighty BYDs sold in New Zealand on Saturday is your proof.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show. This article was sourced from Newstalk ZB.
4 comments:
HDPA is right, although Silverstream is probably the exact type of suburb you would see the EVs.
I also saw a new Mercedes EV plugged in at the supermarket yesterday - those owners don’t need taxpayer support either.
Also, and more importantly, all of this misses the point. Diesel used by the transport industry is the number one consumer of refined oil. It’s how we get product on the shelves. Line haul units fill up their 400l tanks at least every day. Extrapolate that over goodness knows how many trucks need to run up & down our country = a lot of fuel.
People can swap to EVs as much as they want, but if the trucks, trains, & to a lessor extent, agriculture machinery, don’t have oil, we have nothing to use our cars for. Everyone relies on freight to do anything - it’s how we end up with the things we need to live & work.
Secondly, EVs without an upgraded infrastructure is just stupid. At the moment they’re just another example of rich & hypocritical pigs who preach at us about climate change, while using up all our power on their EVs & 400sqm homes & batches. Not to mention their overseas travel & consumption of fast food & fast fashion.
Petrol & diesel are not bad in themselves, it’s about your level of consumption. The grandparents of Gen X had it right. Glass bottles, one car, more biking, vege garden, home baking & small houses with a log burner where kids shared bedrooms.
I saw the odd comment about electric vehicles in a virtue context on various sites including Stuff comments. However, i question the virtue of them versus petrol given the labour exploitation involved involved in acquiring the materials and later in production. The virtuous commenters such as on msm should abandon vehicle use entirely and cycle , not power assisted, or walk.
But hang on a minute. If the stated objective of the policy was to incentivise the decision to purchase an EV over an ICE equivalent, then that's got nothing to do with the financial or social status of the driver. In fact, at the price point of the average EV when the policy was launched it made sense if the idea was to boost the numbers of EVs on the roads. And the data shows it worked. So what if the poor and needy got no immediate benefit. That was not the objective. They tend not to buy new cars anyway. But all those subsidised EVs will eventually work their way into the used car market at which point the less advataged can afford to buy them, and the more advantaged vendors will buy another one, delivering even more green bang for the subsidised bucks. And what's wrong with that?
There's at least one problem with second-hand EVs and that is the batteries don't last forever and replacing them is not cheap. I put EV ownership in the same basket as people who think not eating meat and cycling everywhere will somehow have a feed-back effect on solar radiation, volcanism, ocean currents and a tilted, wobbly planet. i.e. sweet FA.
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