I’m curious to know what others think of this.
I’m personally for keeping it as I see the benefit coming in a few years having many more EV’s available in the second hand market. Currently it’s pretty much dominated by mainly Nissan Leaf’s at the lower end of the secondhand market.
I know of a few people as well who have bought EV/Hybrids recently that would not have even considered going for EV’s or even hybrids without the rebate.
Probably need to understand the policy a bit better. If you get in line for a car but there’s a waiting list from the sudden demand, if you don’t get it until after they remove the policy do you end up missing out? It’s a bit of a gamble.
We have a leaf, I’ve been hoping to get an electric long-distance car as well but was hoping to wait a year or two until ranges get better.
My other question is: are they going to extend the RUC exemption for EVs? Because if they don’t, that will make electric cars much less attractive from a financial angle.Currently the RUC exemption is only until March next year, but it gets extended basically every year for another year. National might not, though.
Probably need to understand the policy a bit better. If you get in line for a car but there’s a waiting list from the sudden demand, if you don’t get it until after they remove the policy do you end up missing out? It’s a bit of a gamble.
Yeah, I’m sure there will be a sunset period, but it’ll most likely only apply to people who have actually bought a car (i.e. it’s been registered in their name). If it’s on a boat, it won’t count.
They will probably give people a bit of lead time after the announcement though (ideally a couple of months at least). Although given it seems to be mostly ideological, maybe they won’t, and sales will drop off a cliff as soon as they confirm it’s ending.
We just got our Leaf this week, now just waiting on the rebate to be processed. The plan is to replace our older hybrid with a longer range EV in the next five years, once more of them show up second hand.
You’re right about the uncertainty, I wouldn’t be putting my name down on a waitlisted EV right now if my purchase was depending on receiving the rebate. I do think some form of RUC is fair for EVs, but yeah making it less attractive to own a low emission vehicle combined with removing the rebate at the same time seems short sighted.
For us (and possibly many others), our decision at this point in time probably hinges a lot on the Rebate. Neither of us have bought a new car before, so it feels like quite an investment to make that (along with a few other factors) we could only really justify with the lower price.
Also, how are you liking your new Leaf? I did do a bit of looking into it recently as a potential option.
If you don’t mind me asking, did you go for the Long Range package?, and why or why not?
Oops I wasn’t too clear, but we got an imported second hand 2018 40kwh Leaf. We were tossing up between going for a new car (MG4) and going second hand. Decided it wasn’t worth it even with full rebate right now for something we were planning to use just around town and for my partner to go to work. Our actual plan was to go second hand and get solar installed, which would have cost less than the new car. The roof maintenance issues threw a spanner into the works so we’re not doing solar for now.
I’ve never bought a new car either and this is actually the most expensive car I’ve ever bought. Accounting for the rebate and selling the old ICE car, the Leaf cost us around $18.5k. When there are a more extended range second hand EV’s for sale will be when we trade up the old hybrid.
We like the car a lot, but I will say if we only had one car the Leaf wouldn’t be my first choice due to the lack of active battery cooling and battery degradation. As it stands the range on it for around town use will last us a long time even with degradation. It was advertised as 89% SOH and it still shows the full 12 bars. I’m just waiting on my ODBII dongle to arrive so I can check and monitor battery health.
Nats seem fairly committed to ending the RUC exemption as well.
I think given the popularity of PHEVs, they really need to reconsider the whole scheme, but I also doubt that much thought will be put into it
Ah that’s a double blow for carbon emissions, two reasons EVs are less attractive.
PHEVs are an interesting case. I’m not sure what a fair system looks like for them, since different use cases will use larger or smaller shares of petrol/electricity.
Non-plugin hybrid are also interesting. If the intention of petrol tax is road maintenance, how come a hybrid gets to only pay half as much because it’s using half as much fuel? Plus, hybrids are the heaviest. Leafs and Model 3s aren’t that much heavier than other cars of a similar size, but hybrids are heavier than petrol or electric cars.
Are we looking at a future where all vehicles need to pay road user charges?
It’s certainly a complex future I fear. We have a PHEV which I look at positively from an overall km/L basis - but because we live 20mins or so ‘from town’ we don’t do a lot of electric-only running. It would seem we may be penalised for that in the future - hit with both the petrol taxes and the electric RUCs.
Interestingly, having just come back from Auckland, I was astounded at the number of Tesla’s on the road - given their price point, it would seem that the EV rebate is going to people who arguably don’t need it
Hmm those are some great points. I really didn’t factor in the whole RUC part of it. Hmmm… makes you think a bit. I recently saw the new Prius online and was wondering what they would cost in NZ because they look pretty good - unfortunately they’re not bringing them here :(
