Watchout if importing is your future stock strategy!

This article raised a few eyebrows when it was published recently. Take a close read of the detail around future proposed import rules. It's all about the climate! First published in STUFF on Oct 24 2020 written by Tom Pullar-Strecker Have you got access to DealerHub? It's something you may want to consider if sourcing stock is important to you. If you are RMVT certified and need stock Click Here and get ready for the launch of DealerHub. 'Feebates' set to come in under another name as roadblock cleared for cap on average car emissions BP Redcliffs owner Robert Jiang, who owns an electric vehicle and has installed a fast EV charger at his petrol station, predicts fossil-fuelled vehicles will only be around for another 20 years. Labour’s election victory means that by 2025 the “average” imported vehicle that Kiwis will be able to buy in terms of carbon emissions will be something like a 1.2 litre manual Suzuki Swift GL.
With emissions of 106 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre, the car is just a smidgen above the target of 105g/km that the Government will require new and used car imports average by 2025 under its commitment to the Clean Car Standard, spelt out in its energy policy in September.
If a Suzuki Swift doesn’t appeal, there are plenty of larger hybrids – including SUVs such as the Toyota Next-Gen RAV4 – sitting around 105g/km, and of course many fully-electric vehicles with zero emissions.
Car dealers will still be able to import much less fuel-efficient cars after 2025 under Labour’s policy, but if they do, they will need to be offset by another import, such as an EV, to maintain the 105g/km average. Tony Everett, dealers manager at the Motor Trade Association, says the Clean Car Standard will decrease the price of low emission vehicles, including EVs, and increase the price of higher-emission vehicles.

That means the policy will have a very similar impact to the Feebate scheme championed by the Greens, which a Labour spokesman confirmed prior to the election “has not been a Labour Party policy”.

Car dealers would be free to import 105 Suzuki Swift 1.2 litre manual cars without penalty in 2025 if they also imported just one EV to keep themselves under the Clean Car Standard emissions cap. The Feebate scheme had been proposed as an adjunct to the Clean Car Standard before both reforms were mothballed by the last government because of the opposition of NZ First.
It would have required buyers of high-emission vehicles to subsidise EVs and other low emission cars directly through a prescribed system of surcharges and rebates.
But the Clean Car Standard will require car dealers to do the same thing if they want to import cars over 105g/km, with the difference being that the exact shape of those cross-subsidies will be left to ‘the market’ rather than to Feebate regulations.
There will be another election before 2025, but the Clean Car Standard will start to kick in earlier.
Labour’s election manifesto committed the party to phasing-in the new target gradually, starting in 2021, arguing it would eventually save New Zealanders billions of dollars in fuel costs.
Hitting 105g/km for imported cars will be a big change for the car industry.
The Transport Ministry estimated the average emissions of New Zealand’s light vehicle fleet at 176g/km in 2018.

Drive Electric chairman Mark Gilbert says New Zealand has fallen behind and needs to be “a bit more determined”.The European Union had already brought down the average emissions of newly registered cars to 122g/km last year and has set a tougher cap of 95g/km from 2021, strongly pushing the market towards hybrids and EVs.
Labour’s energy policy noted that Japan achieved average emissions of 105g/km for vehicles entering its fleet way back in 2014.
But Motor Trade Association strategy manager Greig Epps believed that notwithstanding the problem of climate change, Labour’s 105g/km target for 2025 is going too far, too fast.
“We have been saying we should be looking at Australia where manufacturers have suggested 105g/km by 2030,” he said.
Epps believed the Clean Car Standard could even be counter-productive if it pushed up the price of imported vehicles to a level that dissuaded car owners from replacing their existing vehicles.
“There is a broader map that needs to be drawn in the transport space and this is what we are not seeing from the Government just yet.
“We need to look at the existing fleet as well,” he said.
That could involve increasing the use of biofuels and natural gas and requiring cars to have emissions tests every three years at specialist testing stations, he said.
Epps said Japan’s dramatically lower emissions figures had been helped by the fact a third of sales there were now of 'Kei' cars with very small 0.6 litre engines.

The Clean Car Standard wouldn’t impinge much on imports of the Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, priced from $43,490, which at 112g/km would also require very few EV offsets.Even though 86 per cent of New Zealanders live in cities and towns, “we don't see these cars being widely adopted in New Zealand”, he said.
“I can’t see one of those cars taking the family of four to Taupo, and people will purchase a vehicle for the biggest job they need even it is the least frequent thing that they do.”
The argument that the import target of 105g/km by 2025 is too aggressive doesn’t wash with Mark Gilbert, chairman of EV lobby group Drive Electric and a former managing director of BMW New Zealand.
“We have signed up to all these agreements on carbon emissions and we can’t just hope that it is going to sort itself out; that is never going to happen,” he says.
“We do need some ‘carrot and stick’ and we need to be a bit more determined.”
He described Labour’s manifesto commitment as “a good start”, but said he was concerned by speculation it could exclude utes, which were a large part of the New Zealand car market.

The average emissions of New Zealand’s light vehicle fleet in 2018 were 176g/km according to the Transport Ministry, which compares poorly with overseas.“There is so much bulls... in the background here.
“We should be encouraging more of what we do want on the road and discouraging what we don’t want on the roads and ‘a tweak here and tweak there’ is time-wasting.”
Gilbert said he had been told that the industry would agree to 105g/km by 2028 but believed that was “too late”.
He noted the UK was the latest country that is now expected to ban the sale of non-electric cars from 2030.
“The car manufacturers in Europe are building cars to emission standards that are way [better] than what we are achieving here,” he said.
“We just need to click-in with the rest of the world.”