Silver jubilee for Adrenalin

Happy news – Motor Equipment News’ holding company, Adrenalin Publishing, has just turned 25 years old. It was on June 16, 1993, that Adrenalin was formed by publisher Cathy Parker, and the purchase of NZ Wind surfer and New Zealand Company Vehicle magazine followed in July 1993. Other titles came after, including the purchase of Motor Equipment News, which had been published for seven years before that – making it a 32 year-old veteran of New Zealand’s automotive publishing world – and Adrenalin now publishes seven regular titles and three annual publications, along with a full suite of associated digital properties.

In this uncertain world, where it’s relatively easy to start up a new publication, but a lot more difficult to keep it going, Cathy’s foresight and perseverance in the face of all odds, not least of which was the Global Financial Crisis, is to be admired.

EVs continue to grow

It’s interesting to see that electric vehicles, most of them second-hand Nissan Leafs, continue to flow into New Zealand, and even more interesting to note that most of them are being bought by individuals trying to save costs.

Disappointingly, though, according to the Ministry of Transport, companies aren’t being quick on the uptake.

Also disappointing is that despite clear labelling by the Ministry in its monthly electric and hybrid light vehicle registrations report, there are still those, including the AA, who insist on lumping both hybrids and pure EVs together and claiming “nearly 9,000” EVs.

For the record, as at June 3 there were around 6,000 pure EVs registered in NZ, with less than a third of these new vehicles, the rest being used imports.

This sort of exaggeration, for whatever agenda, does nothing for the cause of electrification, and serves only to further harden those who are against it. At Motor

Equipment News we’re concerned with facts, good or bad, and to that end will soon be starting a regular column on EVs written by experts.