ISSUE 91 JUNE 2026
THE VOICE OF THE NEW ZEALAND AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY
What's the holdup? NEW ZEALAND'S EV TRANSITION KEEPS STALLING — AND THE EVIDENCE POINTS SQUARELY AT POLICY INSTABILITY RATHER THAN TECHNOLOGY OR CONSUMER APPETITE
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ast an eye across the global EV landscape, and the picture is unambiguous. One in four new cars sold worldwide is now electric. China hit one in two last year. Norway, the standard-bearer for long-haul policy commitment, is selling 98% of new cars as EVs — the result of 35 years of consistent, cross-party strategy. Even countries that most Kiwis couldn't confidently place on a map are moving faster than we are: Vietnam at 40% EV new car share, driven by domestic manufacturer VinFast; Turkey at 22%; Indonesia tripling year on year.
THE NUMBERS IN CONTEXT New Zealand? We finished 2025 at 11% of new car sales. Not embarrassing in isolation — but consider where we were. In 2023 we sat at 20%, among the stronger performers in the developed world, with Australia behind us. By 2024, EV market share had fallen to 10.6%, and Australia, which had been the laggard, introduced its New Vehicle Efficiency Standard
in 2025 and overtook us for the first time. The slide wasn't driven by technology failure or a collapse in consumer appetite. The BYD Atto 1 and Dongfeng Box both arrived in New Zealand below $30,000, and 260 new light EV models are now available here compared to 152 in 2023. Drive Electric, the industry advocacy group that tracks EV uptake using Ministry of Transport data and international research, identifies the remaining barriers in its annual State of the Nation report (released for 2026 last
minor adjustments, and Drive Electric’s 2026 report notes the prior package of Clean Car policies had been forecast to reduce transport emissions by 3.4 million tonnes and cut petrol imports by 1.4 billion litres by 2035. The policy reversal did not just slow the EV market;
month) as affordability, policy certainty, charging infrastructure, and the speed of fleet turnover. The technology gap has largely closed. What happened between 2023 and 2024 is well documented. The incoming government scrapped the Clean Car Discount — the feebate scheme that reduced the upfront cost of loweremission vehicles. The Clean Car Standard was weakened, twice. Road User Charges were introduced for EVs, eliminating a tangible ownership cost advantage. These were not
it demonstrated, in real time, how directly purchasing behaviour responds to policy signals. The contrast with the bus sector is instructive. When the government committed in 2021 to purchasing only zero-emission buses from 2025, the fleet responded: New Zealand's electric bus fleet has grown roughly 12-fold in three years. Palmerston North became the first city to run a fully electric bus fleet and recorded a 69% increase in bus patronage over two years.
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