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Around 150,000 new vehicles are purchased every year in New Zealand and around 60% of them are bought by businesses. We reckon a lot more of them should be electric - both for the benefit of those companies but also to seed the second-hand market - and that could be on the cards now because one of the major barriers to fleet EV uptake has been removed.
Following discussions with companies that had large vehicle fleets (including Vittoria Short at ASB), we learned that WorkSafe New Zealand guidance was getting in the way of wider EV adoption because if a work vehicle was being charged at an employee's home, the home was to be considered to be a workplace.
That came with the associated liability and compliance costs for companies and understandably put them off.
We talked with WorkSafe and now Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden has taken action. The guidance has been updated and common sense has prevailed.
The Minister says it best: "Crucially, employee homes are no longer referred to as workplaces in the new guidelines... I expect this to free up the employer-owned EV landscape and give businesses more confidence to choose EVs for their organisations."
Rewiring is keen to keep working with companies to help drive fleet EV uptake. It makes so much sense for profitability, productivity, resilience, emissions and more. So whether it's company cars for getting around town or big rigs for getting around the country, the future is looking increasingly electric.
Read more about the change here.
Could reframing energy independence as a national security issue, rather than a climate one, be our best chance to go electric? The Spinoff collects a range of views from various commentators like Liam Dann, Pattrick Smellie and Joel McManus and shows that it has clearly got the attention of the media and should be getting the attention of our politicians.
Read moreDownload"There is quite a lot of talk about EV price depreciation and resale value, but we are not really talking about petrol car price depreciation. In the next five years or so, we may start to see a big game of petrol car hot potato, first between New Zealanders, and then between other countries." That was Mike Casey writing in Newsroom in January last year but, after the current crisis, it might happen more quickly than expected.
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