ELECTRIC CARS
The world is quickly embracing an electric vehicle future, but attitudes towards the potential of EVs differ greatly on either side of the Tasman.
When it comes to green motoring, it is becoming clear that electric vehicles are the wave of the future. Yet there’s a noticeable difference in attitude towards electric vehicles (EVs) between the federal governments of Australia and New Zealand. EV advocates in Australia shook their heads at the Morrison Government’s Future Fuels Strategy discussion paper released in February, which ruled out subsidies for the private uptake of electric vehicles, and does not propose fuel efficiency standards or a phase-out plan for fossil fuel vehicles.
Meanwhile, in New Zealand, the government recently announced several measures aimed at lowering transport emissions, including setting a Clean Car Import Standard, decarbonising the public transport bus fleet by 2035 and mandating a lower emitting biofuel blend across the transport sector. The government is considering options for an incentive scheme to help Kiwis make the switch to clean cars.
There’s also a dramatic difference in the numbers of battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in each nation. According to the International Energy Agency, in 2019 New Zealand had 17,700 electric cars for a population of 5 million, while Australia had 20,100 for 25.5 million people. Automakers have specifically pointed to Australia’s lack of EV strategy for prioritising other markets. According to Bloomberg, Europe’s largest carmaker Volkswagen Group accused the Australian Government of being “at best indifferent, at worst opposed, to zero-emission vehicles”; while Nissan said it was skipping the release of some EVs in Australia due to a “lack of consistent and cohesive national targets and supporting policies”. But New Zealand has not been immune to criticism, either – Toyota New Zealand CEO, Neeraj Lala warned in December that the country is in danger of becoming “the Cuba of the South Pacific, a dumping ground of Europe’s dirty diesels and high carbon-emitting petrol-fuelled cars” without policy settings that “encourage much higher take-up of electrified vehicles through meaningful financial incentives”.
For both Australia and New Zealand, supply is a key issue affecting EV uptake. Motor Industry Association of New Zealand CEO David Crawford told Newsroom that car distributors have an “Australasian mix”, which poses problems when Australia and New Zealand are out of step with each other over demand for fuel-efficient cars.
“If Australia doesn’t want them, we can’t generally get them in the numbers that we might need,” he said. “Because of the way the market works in Australasia, and the way distribution from manufacturers work, it’s quite hard if they’re not going as fast or hard as we are.”
A recent report released by New Zealand’s Climate Change Commission called for a ban on imports of internal combustion engine light vehicles in New Zealand after 2032. But some are saying this target is too ambitious under the
Scottish inventor Robert Anderson built the first ‘electric carriage’ in 1832.
current circumstances. “That’s great on paper. But the reality is the global demand and supply doesn’t equate to us being able to do that,” says Jonathan Sergel, Motoring Services General Manager at the New Zealand Automobile Association (AA). “There are some real issues around being able to supply the number of EVs that the Climate Change Commission is saying need to be coming into New Zealand to hit various marks.”
Although it’s slow going currently, as more makes and models are becoming available in the New Zealand market, uptake of noninternal combustion engine vehicles is increasing, demonstrating an enthusiasm for eco-friendly cars.
“The range of non-internal combustion engines is starting to really grow in the marketplace, both from traditional brands, such as Toyota, through to new brands which New Zealanders may not have heard of, including brands like BYD, which is one of the biggest EV manufacturers in China,” says Sergel.
“The internal combustion engine is still going to be with us for a number of years, but as the suppliers start bringing in different types of vehicles, the public are starting to buy them in good numbers.”
Globally, electric cars make up about 3 per cent of sales. Common reasons cited for not choosing an EV
include range anxiety (the fear that the car will run out of power before reaching a charging station), charging time and cost. Price is something that should adjust as more vehicles become available to consumers in the Australian and New Zealand markets.
Dr Jake Whitehead, an E-Mobility Fellow at the University of Queensland, explains that we are seeing the price of electric vehicles continue to fall fairly quickly around the world, primarily due to the increasing numbers of batteries being manufactured. “As the battery price – which is a significant component of the electric vehicle cost – continues to come down, we see the EV price fall too,” Whitehead says. “Based on current projections we’re expecting that in the next three to four years, the average electric vehicle in the mass market will be the same price as a petrol/diesel model.”
Top minds around the world are working to address range anxiety and charging time. One exciting recent development comes out of Israel, where startup StoreDot has developed battery technology that can charge an EV in just five minutes.
Another firm making waves is US company QuantumScape, which is developing solid-state batteries made from solid conductive materials instead of liquid electrolytes – these are considered less hazardous in the event of a crash due to being noncombustible. Testing has revealed that using solid-state batteries could allow an EV to be charged to 80 per cent in 10-15 minutes.
At Auckland University, PhD candidate Victor Wang is working on trying to achieve high-power wireless EV charging – something that could also help to address range anxiety by allowing opportunity charging, where the battery can be topped up while the car is stationary for a short period. “This is often referred to as ‘power snacking’ – for example, when we park the car at the parking lot of a supermarket, the car can get charged wirelessly for the duration of a shopping trip, which could top up 30km of range,” explains Wang. He says another opportunity is to install wireless charging spots just before traffic lights, allowing cars to get a few kilometres worth of juice while waiting at a red light.
Whitehead is working on a project looking at the ‘smart charging’ of electric vehicles, to make better use of solar energy being produced in the middle of the day, when demand is low. “With cars being parked 90-95 per cent of the time, the idea of smart charging is that we charge them when we have higher renewable energy periods and you don’t charge them when you’ve got high demand on the grid, and in this way you can actually help to increase grid stability while increasing the uptake of renewable energy,” Whitehead explains.
Whitehead knows that innovation breakthroughs with EVs can’t come soon enough – with other transport such as planes and ships going to take significantly longer to decarbonise, transitioning cars, trucks and buses to electric remains the current focus.
“Governments need to act because if we had 50 years, I have no doubt that the market would take us there and this would naturally happen,” says Whitehead. “The problem is we don’t have 50 years. We’ve only got 15 if we’re really serious about acting on climate change.”
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“AS THE BATTERY PRICE CONTINUES TO COME DOWN, WE SEE THE EV PRICE FALL, TOO.”
DR JAKE WHITEHEAD