EVs are just the beginning
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. That there are three times as many electric vehicles in New Zealand than two years ago is great news.
Latest figures show there are 15,453 registered electric vehicles (EVs) zipping quietly along our roads right now.
Against a national fleet getting uncomfortably close to 4 million vehicles, it’s not even half a per cent. But it’s tracking in the right direction.
Across virtually all measures, EVs are better for everyone and everything than the current petrol and diesel alternatives.
They are quieter, cheaper to run, have an everincreasing range, and despite persistent myths otherwise, use 40 per cent less energy than petrol and diesel equivalents over their total life cycle.
What’s more, in New Zealand we have enough consented renewable energy to support their widespread adoption. Pop the champagne.
If we are to ever reach a goal of carbon neutrality, or some similar measure of progress toward limiting our impact on the climate, EVs are part of the answer.
But while replacing our current fleet one-forone with EVs would be great, we need to start looking past that scenario and into a future with significantly fewer cars.
We need to start imagining an end to widespread car ownership.
Cars have dominated our lives for the better part of 100 years. They have determined how our cities function, how our homes look and how a huge part of our personal income is spent.
The energy and resources that go into cars are also a significant contribution to global warming.
It doesn’t have to continue like that, and yet any change needn’t come at a cost to our individual freedom to get from point A to point B whenever we want.
Before considering the idea of giving up your car for good, think for a minute of what a car represents.
Next to our homes they are our most expensive concentration of resources. Yet most sit idle for 95 per cent of the time.
In transitioning to EVs, we reduce the financial and environmental burden of cars but we won’t be fixing the existing issues we have with them.
We will still have congestion, our city streets will remain crammed with parked cars, we will all still be paying insurance and maintenance on something we use for just a fraction of the day, and we’ll still be crashing into and killing each other. Driverless car technologies are converging now that mean the levels of transport convenience we currently enjoy can likely be maintained while losing the environmental, financial and social costs we must endure.
A driverless EV car service that you subscribe to in a similar manner to Netflix is a distinct possibility within 10 to 20 years. It won’t be cheap, but it will be cheaper than owning a car, and you’ll only pay for what you use.
When the arrival of such services is combined with more frequent and responsive public transport, a network of rentable electric bikes and scooters for use on dedicated lanes, a future with significantly fewer cars on the roads is looking achievable.
Owning a car in 2040 could be as socially and financially reckless as smoking in 2019. And if that happens, we’d all better off.
Next to our homes, [cars] are our most most expensive concentration of resources. Yet most sit idle for 95 per cent of the time.