OPINION

National has pledged to build an EV charging network for rich pricks and their gay EVs. That’s a policy aimed at the Tesla-driving mothers of Point Chevalier rather than the squeezed middle who are really suffering. It beggars belief that they think this is a vote winner.

National is promising to build 10,000 EV chargers – 10 times more than currently exist.

Leader Christopher Luxon made the promise in Christchurch this morning.

He said National would invest $257m over four years to build the chargers, and revive the “highly successful” Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) funding model, which blended public and private sector investment.

Luxon also reiterated National’s promise to axe Labour’s “ute tax”, the clean car discount which subsidises EV purchases by taxing polluting cars. 

The policy has been successful at driving uptake of EVs, but the tax component of it has been unpopular.

“Supercharging EV Infrastructure is part of National’s plan to rebuild the economy. After six years of Labour’s economic mismanagement, the economy is in recession, wages haven’t been keeping up with inflation and mortgage rates are hitting Kiwis in the back pocket,”  Luxon said.

“National will get our economy back on track by delivering the infrastructure New Zealand needs for the future.“

NZ Herald

This is not something that the government should be funding. If car manufacturers and electricity suppliers haven’t seen a commercial need for this then why should the government?

How about putting the cost on to the freeloading EV drivers? Instead of the RUC they don’t pay, how about a Charging Excise Tax to fund it? True user pays.

I will never own an EV and I object to paying, via my taxes, for other people’s automotive choices, especially when those same people are freeloading on RUC.

But they’ve ignored the massive elephant in the room. Most recharging of the EV/Hybrid fleet happens at home anyway. The bigger issue is the electricity generation capacity and security. There is precious little spare capacity in the network, and most of the use of electricity is in the North Island while most of the generation is in the South Island with an at-capacity Cook Strait cable making transmitting power north problematic.

National are trying to show that they are more woke than Labour and wetter than an otter’s pocket.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news,...