You really need to understand the anti-car attitude that this government has got. We really do need to be concerned about this. While I have nothing against electric cars in principle, acknowledging that they will work well for some people, clearly they will not work for everyone. They simply do not have the range, the power or the towing capacity to replace every other vehicle on the road.
I cannot see a problem with making them available for those that want them, although I am absolutely against them being subsidised by taxpayers. I envisage that, in a few years time, there will be quite a few electric vehicles on our roads, and so long as everyone who wants to drive a non-electric vehicle still has the choice to do so, then I have no problem with them.
Our government has a different view, however, and is anxious to take away any choice in the matter. Once again, practicality takes second place to ideology, as this hopeless government once again tries to take away all options, except one.
Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter ordered an investigation into a total ban on petrol car imports by 2035 among a range of options to reduce emissions in the national transport fleet.
An array of documents, including an excerpt from a draft cabinet paper from April last year, reveal Genter instructed officials to work on the policy, before scrapping the plan.
Thankfully, this government will be nowhere near power by 2035, but that is hardly the point. Once again, ideology rides roughshod over reality, and we could have been in real trouble because of this bunch of idealistic idiots.
A Ministry of Transport (MoT) report from September last year showed officials had been instructed to “progress an initiative to regulate an end-date of 2035 to the import of light vehicles that are unable to be driven without fossil-fuels”.
In other words, Genter wanted to ban the import of all cars which still use petrol by 2035.
This was an idea first floated by the independent Productivity Commission, Genter said.
“It’s normal for officials to investigate and recommend a wide range of options to ministers,” she told the Herald in a statement.
Maybe, but to ban cars that are powered by fossil fuels even though there is quite simply no way that electric vehicles will be sufficiently advanced to replace all cars, utes, vans and trucks by that time is madness.
Then there is the small but somewhat inconvenient fact that the national grid will simply never cope with the extra load required if everyone suddenly started driving electric cars. And why not? Because the Greens will not allow any new dams to be built.
But, due to the “lack of information, time and resources”, the cost-benefit analysis was not able to take a number of key issues into consideration.
For example, how such a ban would affect EVs was not looked into, nor was the impacts on electricity prices and the road safety impacts of changing New Zealand’s vehicle fleet so dramatically.
The report said the main benefit for consumers would be the saving people would make when it comes to not having to buy petrol.
Fantastic… but then there is the very small question of replacing the battery on the EV every 5 years or so, at an approximate cost of $30,000 each time. Nobody is saving anything by doing this. We are all being taken for fools.
Genter’s proposal was never taken to Cabinet – “it was rejected and ruled out”.
National transport spokesman Chris Bishop said the fact a cabinet paper was produced showed she was working behind closed doors to change the law.
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“Reducing emissions from our vehicle fleet is an important step in the fight against climate change.
“But it would be irresponsible to make petrol cars illegal so soon without a solid plan to help people into electric vehicles,” he said.
We all know how Julie Anne Genter likes to work in secret, even though she is part of our ‘open and transparent government. Her letter to Phil Twyford about Wellington’s transport woes still has not been released, and she is dying in a ditch to keep it that way. And now this.
Chris Bishop is my local MP, and I have a lot of respect for him, but I disagree with him over this. Electric vehicles will never be a ‘one size fits all,’ and it is all very well to say that they reduce emissions, but that completely ignores their carbon footprint during the manufacturing stage, not to mention the disposal of batteries. That will be the next ecological headache that no one seems to have foreseen.
I am all for being given choices. If someone wants to buy an EV, let them do it, but let them pay the full price, without taxpayer subsidies. But for a government that is completely ideologically driven, and which is completely blinkered in their view of the world, this is a dangerous precedent. Okay, the plan may have been scrapped… this time. How long will it be before it rears its ugly head again?
Remember, this is from an associate minister of transport who calls people who want to drive – presumably including driving EVs – ‘car fascists’. That tells you all you need to know.