It looks like EVs are having a hot girl summer. They first had their time to shine when the previous Labour Government brought in subsidies for New Zealanders to buy EVs. In July 2021, the very first month that the rebate scheme kicked in, overall EV sales increased by more than 200% depending on the specific brand and model. Pure electric and hybrid light vehicle new regos nearly quadrupled to 1,944 units in July '21, compared to just 521 the previous month. Look what happens when you give people free money – they use it. At the peak of the subsidy scheme, battery powered EV market share rose from less than 4% of new light vehicle registrations in January 2022 —so less than 4%— to just over 20% by December 2022. It was big.  

Conversely, when the National-led Coalition Government axed the clean car discount at the end of December '23, or to put it another way, asked the purchasers of cars to pay for them themselves rather than expecting a subsidy from the taxpayer, new EV sales sharply dropped from 20% of market share to less than 10%. Now though, we're seeing another surge in popularity of EVs, this time driven by buyers, not by free money, given the high price of fuel. EV regos rose sharply last month, up 174.1% on this time last year. 

Now Rewiring New Zealand wants to see either of the Chrisses, Luxon or Hipkins, offer an EV salary boost policy based on similar schemes in the UK and Australia. Rewiring NZ said petrol is the largest upward contributor to the inflation rate, and when we're looking at ways of easing the cost of living on households, EVs is one of the biggest ways to go. If you're not paying for petrol, then that's $150-odd in your pocket straight away. The EV salary boost is a policy that would let employees lease a new or used electric vehicle using pretax salary deductions, similar to Australia's scheme.  Lease costs, the vehicle, the insurance, and maintenance are deducted from an employee's gross before tax pay, so that lowers their taxable income.  

Rewiring Aotearoa, who's putting a very positive spin on it, says workers could save an average of $36 a week compared to a standard car loan, and then there's the petrol, and second hand market supply would improve because after the three to five year lease ends, the vehicles enter the second hand market and that makes it more affordable for other motorists who might not be eligible for the employee lease scheme. Do we have to pay for it? Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Proponents estimate the income tax reduction costs the Government roughly $5,000 per vehicle. 

But you know when politicians, and Chris Hipkins was specifically asked this when he was on with me between, they're asked how are you going to ease the cost of living? How are you going to make life easier for households who have to pay rates and insurance and mortgages or rents and food and petrol? Well, says Rewiring Aotearoa, Rewiring New Zealand, here's a way you could do it almost immediately. Reduce the upward pressure on inflation and ease the cost of buying petrol and the maintenance and the like on employees. Doesn't cover the self-employed and the small businesses, but then I guess you can claim back vehicle costs when you submit your tax forms at the end of the year, tax returns at the end of the year.   

What do you think of it as an idea? This was a question that was asked of Chris Hipkins: how? How will you ease the cost of living for your average household? He said public transport, capping public transport fares. What else did he say? I think that was it. Capping public transport fares. Rates were too hard, insurance was too hard, food was too hard. So this is a way of doing it. For those who took advantage of the Government's, the previous Labour Government's clean cars discount, you must be laughing all the way to your electric charge in the middle of town. How many of you have decided to go the EV way? You were on the fence, but then the price of fuel went astronomically high, and you thought to yourself, no, now's the time to do it.  

Is there more choice and more range? Just looking at the different utes and work vehicles available, more and more of them seem to be coming onto the market as hybrids or EVs. But then you also look at Ford, who's reporting billions of dollars in losses in their EV division. Many of them have shelved plans to make workhorses that operate on electric motors. Is there more range for you to have a look at when it comes to finding a workhorse for your business? And would this be something you'd be interested in? If your boss says to you, all right, well you won't get as much money in your pocket, but you will get brand new EV for the term of your employment.