Electric car sales plunge forces New Zealand charger makers to look to Australia

It’s been a tough year for New Zealand’s electric car market, with the government scrapping subsidies for electric cars and ending road user charge exemptions. File photo.
photo: 123 RF

A New Zealand electric vehicle charger manufacturer says it is shifting its focus to the Australian market, partly because of plummeting electric vehicle sales in New Zealand.

Evnex is a Christchurch-based manufacturer of electric vehicle chargers for homes and businesses.

Founder Ed Harvey said the company could more easily raise funds across the Tasman as sales grew in Australia.

He said Australian government subsidies had helped its electric vehicle sales outpace those in New Zealand, where new car sales have fallen from 27 per cent last year to 8 per cent so far this year.

So far, Evnex has about 6000 chargers in New Zealand and 1000 in Australia, but Harvey expects Australia to have more chargers than New Zealand in the next two to three months.

It’s been a tough year for New Zealand’s electric car market, with the government scrapping subsidies for electric vehicles, the end of road user charge exemptions and the upcoming relaxation of emissions standards for imported cars.

Until last year, Australia was one of the only developed countries without tailpipe emissions standards, and its average new car emissions were higher than New Zealand’s.

But now Australia has both tailpipe emissions standards and subsidies for electric vehicles, which Harvey said was reflected in sales.

“Australia’s market share has actually surpassed New Zealand’s by a wide margin over the last 12 to 18 months,” he said.

“New Zealand used to be a leader in electric vehicles, we used to have a much higher market share of electric vehicles than Australia, but now that has completely flipped and Australia now has much more supportive policies for electric vehicles than New Zealand and we’re definitely seeing that.”

Evnex has just raised a “significant” amount of funding from an Australian private equity firm, which Harvey said was made possible solely by the company’s presence in the Australian market. He said Evnex still had a high market share in New Zealand, but the main growth was in Australia.

“The situation in New Zealand is quite challenging at the moment, with electric vehicle registrations down significantly. Most of the growth and investment in our team has been into the Sydney office, and we will be committing a significant amount of resources to Australia for the foreseeable future,” Harvey said.

Evnex makes smart chargers, meaning they communicate with the grid to switch on when renewable, low-cost electricity is plentiful and switch off when supply is constrained.

Simon Mackenzie, chief executive of Auckland line company Vector, wants to see every home with an electric car have this type of charger.

For years, Vector has been lobbying for smart charging to be mandatory for people who install fast chargers.

When Auckland’s electric buses are charging at its new Lynn terminal, the company already communicates with them via smart chargers, encouraging them to charge at off-peak times to smooth demand on the grid.

Mr McKenzie said slower three-pin home chargers would have little impact on the network, but fast home chargers use about half the energy of an entire home in one go, so if 10 homes on a short street were using them, that would be a problem.

“We don’t want everyone to be plugging in their car and charging it at the same time, like when they’re coming home from get off work. If you have a lot of people like that on the street and all their appliances are on, then you start to run into capacity challenges.”

Vector has successfully trialled 200 Evnex chargers to ease demand by allowing cars to charge overnight when demand is low. Mackenzie said customer feedback had been positive and customers had not been inconvenienced.

MacKenzie said Vector and households would save money if smart charging became more widespread because the company wouldn’t need to build as much extra capacity.

The number of household electricity connections in Auckland is growing rapidly and the city is a national hotspot for electric vehicles.

But Vector’s electric vehicle tracker shows there are big differences in EV adoption by suburb, with Central Auckland, East Tamaki, Remuera and Henderson having the highest rates. Onehunga, New Lynn and Avondale have the lowest rates.

“If you’re going to put in a lot of electric vehicle connections and you have to upgrade the network, then the question becomes why should those costs be spread across everybody, because most of Auckland has very low electric vehicle penetration and they shouldn’t have to bear those costs,” McKenzie said.

Vector’s market research found that 63% of people said the removal of EV subsidies would affect their decision on whether to buy an EV, however nearly half of respondents were still considering buying an EV or hybrid, with many considering one within the next two years.

With petrol prices still high, McKenzie wants the charging network to be ready for future growth, even though Australia’s current charging rates have surpassed New Zealand’s.