The Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill was passed in its final reading with the support of Labour, the Greens and Te Pati Maori with National and ACT opposed.

You don’t need to be a political junkie to guess which side of the divide those divergent views came from but there was an impressive level of mental gymnastics and chutzpah in the claims by Labour MPs that the real beneficiaries of the $8625 rebate for buyers of EVs – the cheapest of which cost more than $60,00 – will be those on low incomes.

It was, the MPs seemed to be arguing, a case of trickle-down carbon savings.

 “I can tell you, coming from a low-income family, that that [the $8625 rebate] is an awesome amount to be able to get a discount on a car that, when you do get it, you get to save money on petrol, you get to put more money in our family budgets, and that is going to make a massive difference—while we also can feel we're making sure we're doing our bit to save Papatuanuku as well,” Otaki MP Terisa Ngobi said.

For anyone left scratching their head and wondering where those low-income families with a spare $70k or so were going to come from, Labour MP Helen White had the explanation.

“I want to be very clear about this because there's been a little confusion today about what the scheme is for. It's not for the person who buys the first electric car; it's for all the people who buy the cars subsequently, because most of us, let's face it, do not buy new vehicles.

“We buy second-hand vehicles, and this is going to flood the market with those vehicles and they're going to be affordable for the first time for our poorest families,” White said.

She said gas guzzlers ere expensive to run and maintain so that day couldn't come soon enough.

Transport minister Michael Wood also argued the rebate was a "progressive" measure that benefited the poor the most.

“That's because, as more efficient vehicles come into the fleet, they offer people massive savings on the maintenance and the running of vehicles—massive savings.”

National’s Simeon Brown was having none of it. “I can tell you, Minister, it's actually regressive. It's actually going to send many New Zealanders backwards, simply paying more for the vehicles that they need rather than actually helping them get into cleaner vehicles.”

The scheme was a "tax on hardworking Kiwis," he said.

Fellow National MP Scott Simpson claimed that the announcement of the Clean Car Bill last year with its “punitive taxes” on utes and other vehicles had seen a massive uptick in the number of those vehicles being bought by “people trying to get ahead of the curve and the imposition of the extra tax.”

No mention was made during the debate of the exemption from road user charges currently enjoyed by EV owners – worth something in the vicinity of $800 a year.

The government recently extended the exemption until 2024 – so that’s one subsidy those inheritors of today’s new EVs are unlikely to benefit from.

12 megatons of carbon emissions avoided

Michael Wood pointed out in his opening comments that emissions from the country’s vehicle fleet had increased by 90% since 1990.

The biggest increase of any sector in New Zealand.

“One of the reasons for that is because there has been a total lack of legislative or regulatory leadership in this area. New Zealand, up until today, is one of only three countries in the OECD, alongside Australia and Russia, that don't have a vehicle emissions standard.”

He said the Bill would result in about 12 million tonnes of carbon emissions being avoided.

ACT MP Mark Cameron made the now familiar argument that under the cap-and-trade ETS any carbon savings made as a result of the bill would simply “create an opportunity for emissions leakage into other sectors.”

“We've got a cap here in New Zealand. All it will do, it will literally shift the onus on to somebody else.”

Clean not slow car bill

Labour Ohariu MP Greg O’Connor said people worried that EVs might be sluggish and slow needn’t worry.

“What I'll challenge anyone to do is to get into one of these fully electric vehicles. In the words of someone very close to me, they said they go like cut cats.”

Impacts so far

In a press release celebrating the passing of the Bill, Michael Wood and climate change minister James Shaw said the Clean Car Discount had already seen 8000 buyers of EVs receive a subsidy since last July when the rebate became available.

In total more than 10,000 EVs have been registered. The 2000 plus cars that didn't attract a subsidy presumably being EVs worth more than the $80,000 cap.

With the passing of the legislation the discounts are expanded to include new and used imported hybrids and other low emissions vehicles from 1 April 2022.

The size of those discounts is still to be determined.