The weekend's news was a seismic shift for new car buyers. Gone are the excuses about not buying electric or Plug In Hybrids because of price premiums. The government has waded in with phase one of their Clean Car Policy; a hefty rebate for new (and used) BEVs and PHEVs.
Phase two is a more nuanced approach for low emitting vehicles that favours mild hybrids (and penalises heavy emitters). Phase two comes into effect from 1st January 2022.
Boost Auto completed a trawl through the main manufacturer's websites to create a list of every available new BEV or PHEV in New Zealand today. To be on the list, a manufacturer has to show the price for the vehicle that is available now. Some manufacturers make it hard for consumers to find pricing (we are singling out you Hyundai - you have to go to the finance page to get pricing information), and some brands seem to have removed price altogether of key models (MINI). Where we couldn't find a price without cross checking another source, then the vehicle is left off the list. Where a new vehicle is marked as coming soon, without pricing, these vehicles are also off the list (perhaps they will be added later). Lastly, vehicles over $80,000 have been left off the list. These are luxury vehicles relatively speaking and fall outside of the Clean Car Policy rebate scheme. We are sure you'll see some manufacturers tweak specifications and pricing soon to get under the $80K cap.
The list is surprisingly short today. A comparison in a few months time will show the list has ballooned. There are a lot of PHEVs coming to market. Its just that they are not available today, right now.
The used car market is going to be very interesting. A less thorough check of TradeMe for unregistered Nissan Leaf found a 2012 model with 72K kms for sale for $7,900. That car is effectively just $4,450 after the Clean Car Rebate. Motoring has never been cheaper.
However the cheapest new BEV or PHEV is now the MG ZS EV, available at a whisker above $40,000. At this price point volume of affordable BEVS will explode. The question has to be, will they be three of four times their current sales rate?
To understand more about the terminology and differences between BEV and PHEVs see here.
To understand how WLTP fuel economy for PHEVs is calculated please see here.