A mate just wound me up, claiming St Jaz of the Pestilence has announced an announcement that EVs will be subsidised up to seventy ‘K’ value limit, by eight grand and filthy carbon consuming little vehicles of convenience will cost more . Nice that the really rich will be paying full price eh?
Tell me he is wrong, it will not be the Ponsonby set getting subsisdised to make their little shopping trolly extension cost a nice eight “K” less while the tradie from South Auckland will be forced to pay more just o get his tools to a work site, that will not be fair, kind or any other facile description that the Government actually gives a sh*t.
If purchasing an electric vehicle does not stack up economy wise then forget it, otherwise it will devolve to rich persons who could well make the change being subsidised by a financially challenged tradie just trying to get by.
When will they ever learn, apologies to the Peter Paul and Mary trio c1955.
No Minister 
EVs have a usable life (without) uneconomical battery replacement considerably lower than the average age of the current NZ fleet.
It’s life if followed with a costly battery recycle, because they will not be safe in non transport applications and EOM will certainly not accept liability for back yard repurposing.
I did an assessment of a new Toyota Yaris vs a Nissan Leaf over a 100,000 km lifespan, and posted it on my own site sometime ago.
In short, it’s not financially feasible, and the range of the Leaf decreases over time to the point where it becomes unuseable.
I’m sure your mate was pleased to get a handout, Vet, but it just underlines the fact that electric cars aren’t very practical.
Sorry, I meant Gravedodger, not Vet
I am frequently told that the current EV’s are intended for more urban cycle niche, to replace the smaller ICE vehicles.
All reaffirms for me is that the current EV’s simply cannot match the versatility and life span of the modern small hatchback, or even an older vehicle like an original Mini.
imagine driving an EV to Invercargill.
Leaf is not the only EV, but maybe things have changed. Look at this calculator:
https://www.nissan.com.au/vehicles/browse-range/leaf.html
Already major car manufacturers have announced they will stop building ICE by 2030, or sooner.
And for your “Tradies” Ford is coming to the rescue.
https://evcentral.com.au/ford-f-150-lightning-revealed-large-pickup-goes-electric/
Yeah and Ford’s EV Ute will be$150k, Little Dipstick. No problem, just load that tradie’s cost onto the cost of a house. The socialist elite can afford it. The rest can live in a council tenement. Perfect!
Every innovation comes at a high cost, but as the market expands, prices drop. My first PC was an “IBM clone”, 80286 processor, VGA graphics, 1MB RAM configurable as 640K/0k or 512K base, 512k extended memory, 20 MB HDD, 5.25 and 3.5 FDD, a 9 pin dot matric printer – total cost $5500.00, and I bought wholesale in those days.
My most recent purchase was 10gen i7 CPU, 32GB RAM, 500MB SSD, 2TB SSD, 2TB HDD, NVIDIA GE Force GTX 1650 GPU, GB MB ready for Gen 11 CPU – total cost $2200.00 and that one was retail.
Back to the Ford, Pricing for the entry model Lightning starts at US$39,974 ($51,660), while mid-spec XLT starts at US$52,974 ($68,456). Seems you could buy two for $150k and still have change.
The electronics indrustry has come along way in 100 years, The automobile industry has simply refined the ICE in the same time. There have been alternatives in the past, but none has the practicality of the ICE.
Unless you can solve the problem of storing electricity in a practical manner, you are just promoting an inferior technology.
Artifically making electric cars ‘more affordable’ doesn’t change their impracticality and is a backward step.
What you are not explaining, little big headed dipstick, is why taxpayers should be subsidising anybody’s choice of vehicle and how whatever we do in this tiny country with f-all new vehicles per annum compared with, I don’t know, practically anywhere, will make a blind bit of difference to the so-called “climate change”. Your self satisfying upgrade of technology came without taxpayer subsidies, why should the most used means of mass transportation be any different?
Gravedodger,
Get used to the change in technology. ICE cars won’t be manufactured for too many more years. Sure ICE cars may be cheaper for the time being. But that will change as the industry does the technology switch.
In the meantime it is rather tiresome to keeping reading of the dinosaurs revolt.
But in any event, don’t worry. You can keep buying new ICE cars for the next decade. That should be enough for you.
Wayne most new technologies do not come to fruition.
I am a fan of electric traction, the electric motor has the ideal operating characteristics for turning wheels that provide forward motion to vehicles – because of “Back EMF” a feature of electric motors they have a natural feedback mechanism that provides exactly the needed torque for the circumstance. Its why the electric cars can have eye watering acceleration. And they can act as generators (that’s the “Back EMF” thing) allowing for “regenerative braking”, that is the kinetic energy of the vehicle can be captured and transformed back into electricity which can be reused
And they are simple, easier to manufacture and requiring a lot less maintenance than an ICE
What is there not to love?
Electric locomotives predate cars – vehicles that run on fixed track beds, like trains and trams can be fed power from an external source, overhead wire, 3rd rail (or 3rd and 4th rails in the case of the London underground). But the cost of building and maintaining this external supply has limited railway electrification to well used corridors)
Because electric traction is so damn good most diesel locomotives actually use diesel generators to make the electricity that turns their wheels
And this is old technology not “new”, Electric traction on railed vehicles goes back to the late 1870s and was very common on commuter trains and trams before WW1
So electric vehicles are not new, they have been around since before the dawn of the automotive age – so why didn’t electric cars catch on?
And the answer is the power supply – that’s their Achilles heel
If you cannot connect to an external power supply you need to carry the energy you require stored in batteries and the energy density of a fully charged battery is far far lower than the energy density of petrol, diesel, kerosene or coal, which means you need to carry around a great big bulky and heavy battery and still not be able to match the range of an equivalent ICE vehicle with a full tank of gas. not even come close
And it takes hours to recharge it
There are other issues as well Wayne, such as battery performance being temperature dependant
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Vote National in 2023 for more of this attitude.
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Can you not crunch numbers Wayne? Numbers of battery production, physical inputs, electricity production and future demands, etc, etc.
The major car companies are putting out these dates because they don’t want to be the target of activists. But behind the scenes, quietly, things continue as per usual. There will be more EV’s in future, the tech will improve, the prices will drop. But the physical realities will remain. It’s the same stuff that caused the idiots at General Motors to respond to California emissions requirments in 2000 by yammering about their first 100% EV. Meanwhile the canny folk at Toyota produced the dreadful compromise of ICE and EV called the Prius – which sold by the bucketload in CA and elsewhere while the GM EV went down the tube, followed by the company itself less than a decade later.
But don’t take the word of a Hardline Rightwing Extremist like moi, look at Chris Trotter’s latest, Hoping For Divine Intervention:
Heh. I also had to laugh at this:
You think he’s talking about the Wellington luvvie group and those in Labour? Well, yes, but he also just described Wayne Mapp to a tee
Andrei …. sage comment.
Wayne … for rural and tradie NZL the juries still our on EVs. The one glove fits all approach is never the answer. Were is so the Trabant would have been a roaring success. Subsidies distort the market and at some point they become unsustainable. You can’t argue free trade on one hand and embrace subsidies on the other.
@Veteran
Go back 100 or so years and for farmers, fishers, shearers, etc, juries were still out on ICE. None could match the low cost, ease of refuelling, and ability to traverse vast distances over rugged terrain, of the horse.
You are correct about subsidies distorting markets, but keep in mind almost every ICE manufacturer is the beneficiary of subsidies. Australia has just committed billions in subsidies to oil refineries and coal fired power, as well as building a government owned gas fired power station to produce electricity for which there is no demand.
little Dorrit go back 100 tears and the average Farmer had been liberated by the Ford Model T and the Tractor was making its first appearance – and farmers couldn’t wait to retire the old mule
That was also the later age of the steam traction engine and its operators and what a wonderful piece of kit they were – they first appeared in the 1850s and could be used to plow fields, haul goods to market or as stationary engines to run threshing machines and saw mills.- I think when they were used for plowing they were set up as stationary engines and winched the plow across the field
In their most picturesque form they used to run fairground attractions like merry-go-rounds, with the steam from their boilers being used to play music on a steam organ as they turned – the sound of the steam organ being so evocative of the merry-go-round that long after the disappearance of the traction engine, recordings of the same would be used with merry-go-rounds and are to this day in film scores of films with fairground scenes
Above you waxed lyrically about the announced electric F-150.
The thing about full size pick-ups is while they are used by some to project their masculinity the majority are put to work hauling heavy trailers and nothing will drain a battery faster than hauling a trailer.
What this utterly repulsive Government initiative is is yet another example of a wealth transfer from the people who work for a living to the effete urban middle classes.
For that group an electric car might make sense – if you have a garage where it can be charged overnight, only do a few Ks daily and don’t have a gaggle of kids and their sports gear to haul about , why not?
I can’t resist – a reminder of the times when people were still allowed to enjoy themselves
Oh and like most garden gnomes Wayne is away with the Greens.
An EV is of course not the answer to pollution or so called Global Warming.
It’s answer is simply to displace pollution to another part of the supply/production/ disposal chain.
One only has to mention rare earths, 750 kg or more of batteries, generation sources and availability, battery disposal…. the list is substantial.
I suspect Waynes forecast is more about ingratiating himself with the current socialist regime than being based on any factual analysis, that is clearly evident.
In the meantime ICE continues on its never ending search for efficiency gains and minimisation of environmental pollution through the exhaust pipe.
While quietly in labs all around the wold other energy modes for transport are being researched which overcome the energy density issue.
Who knows what will be the eventual winner but my bet would not be on EV’s.
The best way to have a winner come through is a level playing field un-distorted by subsidies and politicians
uneducated guesses!
On that basis one could comfortably bet that Wayne is wrong simply on the basis that he is an ex politician.