From renewable energy to battery components, we bust some common myths around EVs.
For Anna Henwood the decision to buy a full battery electric car was easy. She had wanted to cut her fuel bill, still drive a stylish vehicle and to do something good for the planet. “It feels more like the future,’’ she says of her sporty Peugeot E-208.
She lives at Red Beach, about 40km away from her job in Auckland City where she goes three days a week. She’s calculated she saves around $250 a month on fuel.
Before the Chief Executive of consumer research company Stickybeak bought the car last year, she was aware of issues over battery disposal and some scepticism over just how green battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are, but those concerns were outweighed by the financial benefits and the long-term environmental benefits. She’s able to charge up at home overnight with plenty of battery to spare for her commute.
Anna is one of the small but growing number of motorists making the move as driving range for their dollar increases and the range of BEVs grows with new models from China.
There are just on 90,000 BEV owners in New Zealand. In the middle of this year these accounted for just 1.89% of the light vehicle fleet.
From close to 40% of sales during the peak of the Clean Car Discount scheme, sales of BEVs fell off a cliff early last year but have recovered to about 12% of new vehicle registrations.
While home charging is the favoured option, the lack of public charge points is a deterrent. There are about 1,350 now, with the Government committing to 10,000 by 2030.
Drive Electric promotes electric vehicle (EV) use in New Zealand; its chair Kirsten Corson says no two buyers are the same. Some are acutely conscious of the long-term environmental impact of their EV, others buy them when petrol prices go up.
But she says that no matter how you look at it, you’re going to be better off by all measures.
Amid an anti-green backlash on social media there are claims, usually featuring a photo of a Tesla battery, that the minerals and energy used to make a BEV mean it would take seven years to begin lowering carbon emissions compared to making an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle.
The staunchest advocates of EVs concede that making them does initially require more energy, given the quantities of metals such as cobalt, copper and nickel which must be mined often in remote places and transported to manufacturing hubs in the United States, Europe and China. But it’s two years or less before they’re carbon neutral, according to experts in the US and Europe.
Updated findings by the International Council on Clean Transportation finds the lifecycle emissions of BEVs in Europe are four times less than petrol powered ICE vehicles.
Although BEVs were estimated to have about 40% higher production emissions than ICE vehicles due to emissions from production of the battery, these additional emissions are offset after about 17,000 km of use in the first one or two years. And this is in the European Union where renewable electricity generation accounts for around 50% of total power, far lower than in this country.
The council, which has backing from the European Commission, the United Nations and private donors, finds that when using only renewable electricity, BEVs were estimated to produce life-cycle emissions 78% lower than conventional ICE vehicles.
Kirsten of Drive Electric says businesses and the Government buy about 60% of new cars and it doesn’t take a fleet buyer long to calculate payback on BEVs.
She also says retired people on fixed incomes enjoy the fuel cost savings as well as less stress about repairs, given EVs have just a fraction of the moving parts – about 20 to 25 – while there’s about 2,000 parts in ICE cars.
Battery recycling is in its infancy but growing, most for home use but increasingly for re-use, with Auckland company Mint Innovation part of an $18m international consortium to recycle them for Jaguar Land Rover.
Ben Gleisner, founder of green fintech company Cogo, is a fan of electric cars. His entry into the market to accommodate a growing family and at least four big road trips a year was, of necessity, a hybrid Mitsubishi Outlander. That was about seven years ago but now the Wellingtonian is confident that new big BEVs have the range required for his family’s needs and he’s about to buy one.
He’s been a Treasury environmental economist and, while saying he’s no expert, has crunched the numbers.
EVs are not for everyone, he says. There’s a sweet spot in the number of kilometres you do to make it worth investing in a BEV, still typically more expensive than an equivalent ICE vehicle. For him, the environmental savings over the lifetime of the car are important. “You're talking 80% to 90% less carbon. So, it is a no-brainer.’’
Battery EVs produce no tailpipe emissions, so the true test of their environmental credentials is how the electricity fed into them is generated.
New Zealand is blessed with abundant renewable electricity. It fluctuates but it is between 80% and 95% on any given day.
But this means the rest comes from burning gas and coal that feeds the national grid, a big pool where all power is drawn from. No matter which power company you’re with, even those which generate only from renewable sources such as wind and water, the power for your BEV can come from thermal generation.
The good news is that the proportion of renewable electricity will continue to edge up when new plants are approved and built.
The country will need them as its industrial and transport sectors are increasingly electrified.
Right now, EVs draw a tiny amount of total electricity. A Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) study showed that in 2023, EVs accounted for 0.27TWh, (terra-watt hours) out of total demand of about 40TWh. That’s less than 1%. However, the MBIE scenario shows transport electricity demand growing to 9.6TWh by 2050, which would be around 15% of demand in 2050.
Getting that power to chargers in homes and on highways will need further investment in the grid and local lines companies around the country.
In Norway, close to a third of cars are BEVs and to date this year 93% of new vehicle sales are fully electric.
Norway has vast oil resources making it one of the world’s wealthiest countries and it is blessed with deep hydro storage and wind turbines that generate close to 100% of its electricity. Since the 1990s it has penalised petrol and diesel cars with high taxes, while exempting EVs from import and value-added taxes to make them more attractive.
Secretary General of the Norwegian EV Association, Christina Bu, has spent nearly two decades promoting the benefits of EVs and fending off waves of attack with ever-evolving narratives decrying them.
Bu, who earned a place on TIME’s prestigious 2024 list of the 100 most influential global climate leaders, says the journey for other countries with less renewable generation must start somewhere.
“If you believe we have to reduce man-made climate emissions drastically, then we have to make sure our vehicles can run on renewable energy,’’ she says.
She says it’s unwise to wait for 100% renewable energy production before starting to adopt EVs because that will take decades.
“We have to do both things as fast as possible. So, changing to electric vehicles makes sense in every country and will just make more and more sense as electricity production increases.’’
This story is from the Spring 2025 issue of AA Directions magazine.
