An Australian research project called EV Firesafe, which is funded by the Department of Defense and aims to reduce the risks for first responders, has looked at a heap of data and come up with a list of findings. The main one is: "Our intial research findings, based on global EV battery fires from 2010-2020, indicate a 0.0012% of a passenger electric vehicle battery catching fire. While it's difficult to find a similar stat for internal combustion engine (ICE) passenger vehicles globally, a range of country-based reports we found suggest there is a 0.1% chance of an ICE vehicle catching fire."

Think of hydrogen as another type of battery, rather than an energy source. The issue is that it's not a very good battery. 

You start with electricity, you make hydrogen, you then use that hydrogen to make electricity again. Around one third of the energy you put in comes back out. This is not efficient and it also means hydrogen will be considerably more expensive than electricity for the customer. It’s better to just use the electricity in an electric machine or store it in a battery, if you can. 

There is potentially a role for hydrogen in heavy transport, steel and cement making etc where the advantages outweigh the inefficiencies, but even large mining operations are investing heavily in electric machines and many hydrogen trials have proven to be expensive and problematic.

Just as gas doesn’t need to play a role in our homes, hydrogen should not play a role in light vehicle transport. We don’t have a network of hydrogen stations, whereas we already have an electricity grid that spans most of the country and a growing number of solar installations where you can fill up your EV at home.

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We do not need to replace petrol stations. While the fast charging network is important, especially for longer trips and for those without offstreet parking, we should be rolling out more convenient slow chargers through communities (supermarkets, beaches, parks, workplaces etc). These will be much cheaper to build, and have minimal impact on electricity networks compared to fast chargers. 

Using a petrol price equivalent, you can power your electric car for around $0.30/Litre with rooftop solar and $0.60/Litre with electricity delivered from the grid, but fast charging is much more expensive. 

Many new EVs now have over 500km of range, and the average car in New Zealand drives 11,000km a year, or just over 200km a week.

That's around four hours total plugged into a 7kW charger to get all the energy they need per week. The car is probably used for less than 2 hours a day, and they may have another 150 hours that week when their vehicle is parked, so even standard plugs with the car charging overnight can get you the energy you need. 

If the range keeps improving as it has over the years, we may not even need to stop to charge on that 800km trip, although we’ve never met a human bladder that can last that long.

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One of the main reasons you would buy a petrol car today is because the upfront cost is still lower than an EV. It may seem cheaper, but when you buy a petrol car, you’re also locking yourself into many years of increasingly expensive petrol. The cost of fossil fuels (and grid electricity) have increased at above the rate of inflation and they are expected to keep increasing. 

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Global forecasts show EVs could be the same price as fossil fuel cars by 2026 so the economics keep improving. Early adopters often pay a premium and the price of EVs has dropped considerably, which is good for anyone looking to buy a second car. 

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Everyone should pay their fair share for road use. But even with RUCs added EVs are a lot cheaper than fossil fuel cars, especially when they are charged with rooftop solar. Using a petrol price equivalent, you can power your electric car for around $0.30/Litre with rooftop solar and $0.60/Litre with electricity delivered from the grid. Fast charging is much more expensive, but still cheaper than petrol.

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They make even more sense. People who live in the country drive a lot more and the more you drive, the more money you save with electric cars. The average New Zealander drives about 11,000km a year, while those in rural areas can drive over 50,000km per year. 

Data suggests over 90% of charging happens at home and with ranges of new EVs now in excess of 500km, more expensive fast chargers are unlikely to be required. 

‍Should we go back to subsidising EVs? 

If we want to get access to a lower cost of living and reduce our emissions, getting more EVs on the road is still a good idea. We believe low-interest loans for home and transport electrification are a better option than subsidies, although there should still be room for income-contingent grants. 

As our recent paper Investing in Tomorrow shows, this doesn’t need to be seen as a cost, it's an investment that can save households $29 million per day by 2040 because we are avoiding expensive imported foreign fossil fuels and using more locally generated renewable energy. 

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One of the big opportunities with the transition away from fossil fuel vehicles is the role EVs could play as big batteries on wheels. 

There are some EVs that allow what’s called Vehicle to Load (V2L), so you could make a coffee via your MG, make a toastie with your tractor, or run a quiet camping generator. 

Plugging in to the home (known as vehicle to grid) as opposed to just a particular machine has long been a dream of EV enthusiasts but is more complicated.  

In Australia, there is currently only one car, the Nissan Leaf Gen 2, and one charger, the Wallbox bidirectional Quasar, that allow you to do it, but new, more affordable innovations like Hoem may change that. 

A typical electric car battery holds about 60+ kilowatt hours of electricity, which is enough to power a small home or apartment for a week. There are pilots overseas where large EVs like Ford F-150s and school buses have been plugged in and are feeding back into the grid. 

With advances in EVs, batteries, and energy systems accelerating all the time, this may not be far off for New Zealand either.

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We need more active transport and more electric public transport and we should be reducing the number of cars on the road, but many New Zealanders still need a car. For those that remain, they should all be the more efficient electric versions. 

To give an example of the efficiency gain and reduction in energy from switching to an EV, with an electric motor, about 90% of the energy is put towards moving the car. In a fossil fuel car, 80% of the energy gets wasted as heat, vibration and noise and the waste is buried in the sky. It’s like buying a pizza and only eating two slices. 

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Approximately 40% of all global sea freight is in the transportation of fossil fuels so when you electrify your car, you also help remove the tankers from the water and the trucks from the road. 

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We agree that where possible, people should opt for active and public transport. But where cars are required, we are pushing to ensure that they are all EVs so that we can eliminate all need for fossil fuels in our transport sector, including the cost of fossil fuel distribution.

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Towing does reduce range, but by how much depends on the weight you’re towing and whether the car has been designed to tow. One test showed an Audi e-tron decreased its range by one third when towing a caravan, while a Tesla Model 3 towing a caravan reduced its range by 50%. 

Most EVs in New Zealand today are not designed for towing significant amounts, though this is expected to change, and the USA is already demonstrating EVs that can tow large loads long distances.  

‍EV sales have slowed down here and overseas. Are they overhyped? 

Sales may have slowed down in New Zealand recently, but that was expected because the clean car discount was stopped. Even with the new road user charges, EVs are still cheaper to run than petrol or diesel cars over their lifetimes, especially if you have rooftop solar and batteries, and global forecasts show EVs could be the same price as internal combustion engine cars by 2027.

The adoption curve is not perfectly flat but the growth trend over time is obvious worldwide. Some experts think we’re reaching peak global oil demand largely because of the success of EVs. Many manufacturers have agreed to phase out fossil fuel cars, so their resale value is likely to go down, not up, simply because they’re not as useful. 

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Battery degradation is an issue with some earlier EVs and the replacement costs are high, but modern EV batteries are guaranteed for many years and show very small amounts of degradation. They are now generally expected to last for the lifetime of the vehicle. 

EECA says most new EVs have battery warranties that guarantee the battery for around 8-10 years, or distances such as 160,000km, which is similar to 15 years of average driving. New electric vehicles often have ranges exceeding 500km. With average weekly driving being closer to 200km in New Zealand, older second-hand EVs are more than capable of coping with most daily driving, and in most cases weekly driving, and come at a significantly lower upfront cost.

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Colder temperatures do have an impact on the performance of batteries because colder temperatures slow down chemical reactions. Below freezing temperatures have been shown to reduce range by 10% - 20%. It also takes longer to charge in cold temperatures. Very high temperatures can also affect performance. Modern electric vehicles now have thermal management systems in their batteries to mitigate the impact of outside temperature variation, and have been demonstrated to perform in both extreme cold and extreme heat (there are now fully electric snow groomers available).  

Cars in New Zealand drive an average of 210km a week, and almost every new EV has far more range than that, which means a 10-20% reduction in range would make no real difference to regular car use. A good way to think about it is if your fuel tank was at 90% rather than 100%, would it make a difference to how you think you can use your car on any given day? 

Many EVs have phone apps that will let an owner set a desired departure time and turn on preconditioning so a car can use grid electricity while it’s plugged in to heat the cabin and warm its battery to the desired operating temperature. This can conserve more of the battery charge for actual driving, but this is only needed ahead of the small number of longer trips the EV will do. 

Mining of any mineral or materials should be done as ethically and responsibly as possible. In the past, there were some issues with mining of cobalt for batteries. As the industry has matured, however, so has the traceability and sustainability of mining for critical minerals. Today, more batteries have transparent mineral production or using alternatives such as lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. Australia is a world leader in ethically and environmentally produced critical minerals. The best news is that more than 90% of the components in an EV battery can be recycled, and the rate of recycling will only improve as the industry expands. In sum, even considering battery production, the environmental impact of EVs are tiny when compared to fuel-powered cars. 

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While hybrid cars (HEVs) may give peace of mind for those with range anxiety, hybrids have limitations compared with full EVs, including more moving parts and maintenance, generally less power and efficiency and, most notably, the car will still be responsible for emitting pollution. In short, if you can, go straight to an electric vehicle.

Standard HEVs are not low emissions vehicles. They still consume about 70% of the petrol used by petrol vehicles (and create 70% of the emissions). HEVs will not allow us to reach our fossil fuel-free and climate goals and Rewiring Aotearoa would not recommend them being supported in green finance offerings. 

Plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) still often consume large amounts of petrol, though they can be driven some distance with zero emissions on electric power. Therefore their emissions are largely down to driver behaviour. If owners choose not to charge them, they are essentially an HEV or internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. However, they likely do have a short term role in decarbonisation, especially with larger vehicles like utes which don’t have as many full EV options (e.g the new BYD Shark is one example of a hybrid ute). For these cases, there are some PHEVs overseas with 100km - 200km of battery range, which petrol can supplement. These models can play a more important role in decarbonisation. Still, they are a stepping stone and not the solution. 

EVs are the main vehicle that should be encouraged and supported for decarbonisation.

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