Accelerating electrification: Critical steps to speed up EV adoption and net zero climate change emissions by 2050 in New Zealand
The electric vehicle (EV), despite its enormous advantages in operating cost, efficiency, environmental impact and social cachet, suffers from a chicken-and-egg dilemma:
Customers are reluctant to buy them if they can’t get them recharged on the road, and nobody is going to build charging stations until there’s a critical mass of vehicles to use them.
Secondly, the critical issue of the EV car is that it is just that – a car that most likely will continue to have single person occupancy in the majority of its trips and hence the carbon reduction counts less if the congestion is still rife and the majority of people aren’t in an EV. It is great to see the New Zealand government looking at grants or subsidies for EV purchase – but again, that isn’t shifting the dial on congestion in cities, isn’t necessarily getting the enormous investment in infrastructure that is required to make regional trips feasible (greater than 150km), and isn’t solving the other riddle of the issues of the ‘grey’ import market.
In 2015, the Ministry of Transport (MoT) published their “A Model for Projecting the uptake of Electric Vehicles”. In this it surmised that the barriers to EV adoption were:
- EVs have a high price premium over non-EVs;
- Supply of EVs model is limited, in terms of vehicle segments and brands;
- Consumers are concerned by EVs’ short kilometre range (before recharge is required) and long charging times;
- Reliability and re-sell concerns – concerns that the technology is not sufficiently advanced, including reliability, safety and battery degradation issues, as well as uncertainty regarding residual values; and low awareness of the potential availability of EVs.
Improving the capacity and lowering the cost of storage batteries; increasing the scale of deployment of plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) vehicles and battery-electric vehicles (BEVs); and developing the infrastructure for recharging electric vehicles.
Further to this, in January 2018, the Cabinet Economic Growth and Infrastructure committee published their “Electric Vehicles: Package of measures to encourage uptake – which announced the following:
- In December 2017, New Zealand had 6,162 EV’s registered
- Announced $3.74 million for 20 projects under the third round of the Low Emission Vehicles Contestable Fund, administered by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA).
- $1.7m of the funding allocated to help fill gaps in the country’s charging infrastructure.
- Funding was also going towards tourism opportunities such as electric campervans.
The real push though may and should be focussed in the development of EV’s in the fields of freight and public transport vehicles and below are a number of examples of these, which have been developed overseas:
Called, “Arrival” – this electric truck has a range of up to 240 km (approximately 150 miles)
UPS will operate a 35 lightweight electric fleet as a pilot
These trucks will add to UPS’s fleet of 300 electric vehicles and almost 700 hybrid vehicles across the US and Europe.
UPS has invested $750 million into alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles since 2009.
These THOR TRUCKS – referred to as the ET-One, have a range of up to 500 km (approx. 300 miles)
Costs around $150,000 and has a full load capacity of 36,000 kgs
Looking to take on the might of TESLA with the same idea of Virgin airlines – being the smaller company (1
8 employees) among the big guns
In the context of public transport vehicles, Alexander Dennis/BYD 12m electric bus pilot in Auckland originally had two buses as a trial funded by the Government’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) and Auckland Transport (AT). AT was awarded $500,000 from the EECA Low Emission Vehicles Contestable Fund towards one of the buses and charging infrastructure. AT’s contribution towards the cost of the buses is $1.21m.
In comparison to even the distance we have since travelled in New Zealand to deliver EV pub transport vehicles, Shenzen in China leads the way worldwide as this south-eastern city, which connects Hong Kong to mainland China, announced at the end of last year that all of its 16,359 buses had gone electric. The city’s buses are the world’s first 100 percent electrified bus fleet.
Shenzhen adopted a type of e-bus where a five-hour charge supports 250 kilometres (155 miles) of driving bus operators collaborated with charging infrastructure providers to furnish most of the bus routes with charging facilities.
So, the conclusion of this ‘think piece’ is that:
- Cost is the key barrier to EV adoption in New Zealand
- Subsidies have been exceptionally successfully in China achieving success, and so the recent changes are welcome in the net zero climate emissions 2050 chase
- Freight and Public Transport vehicles could lead the way and expand the re-charging infrastructure; but more investment is needed to deliver this
- Government and large private company fleets need to be ensuring that their fleets are fully electric by 2025, as a key initiative to support a net zero climate change target by 2050 (set by the New Zealand government)
- There needs to be significant government intervention that assists in setting limitations on cheap imports from Japan, Singapore and UK for standard cars; to allow the EV’s to flourish in NZ.
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