Car makers fail to persuade select committee to water down proposed carbon targets

Friday, 7 January 2022

Genesis and Evnex have teamed up to remove EV charging 'pain points' with new technology.

Car manufacturers have failed to persuade a select committee to recommend watering-down proposed targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from imported vehicles.

But Motor Industry Association chief executive David Crawford believed their efforts had not yet reached the end of the road.

The Government’s proposed Clean Car Standard would impose financial penalties that could amount to thousands of dollars per vehicle on car importers that fail to achieve stepped reductions in the average carbon emissions of new and used imported cars, utes and vans between 2023 and 2027.

Crawford said the Motor Industry Association was not outright opposed to the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill.

* Tesla says big carmakers are using disproved arguments to fight NZ carbon targets

* Toyota NZ says government push on car emissions has helped it get cleaner stock

* NZ should be a 'fast follower' reducing car emissions, says Ford boss

Toyota NZ chief executive Neeraj Lala was among those who argued car-makers needed more time to change their offerings.

For example, it accepted the Government’s target for 2025, which would reduce average carbon emissions on cars to 112.6 grams per kilometre travelled, with a 155g/km target for utes and vans, he said.

Those targets, which are based on the newer emissions measure, would mean that by 2025 the average car that could be imported penalty-free in terms of its emissions would be something like a 1.2 litre manual Suzuki Swift.

But the association had hoped to persuade Parliament’s Transport and Infrastructure select committee to relax the Government’s targets for 2026 and 2027 which several car-makers have labelled unrealistic.

Transport Minister Michael Wood says proposed emissions limits on imported cars will only put NZ in the middle of the pack.

Those targets are tougher than the European Union’s current targets and would require a significant shift towards electric vehicles.

Instead, the select committee stuck by the Government's targets when it published its majority report on the law change just before Christmas, leaving National and ACT MPs on the committee to offer dissenting opinions opposing the legislation.

“We hoped we had a chance of getting it changed,” Crawford said.

He had heard “whispers” that the targets for 2026 and 2027 might still be open for discussion by the Government.

It was positive that the select committee had recommended a mandatory review of the targets no later than June 2024, he said.

“We think it's too early to have targets for 2027. The target for 2027 should be set by regulation after the 2024 review.”

Toyota, Nissan, Ford, Hyundai and Mazda had all rallied behind a proposal by the Motor Industry Association to water-down the emissions targets for the period after 2025, so New Zealand would be achieving the same goals as the EU in those later years, but two years after the EU.

Crawford said even that would be tough to achieve, given the industry’s starting point.

The average greenhouse gas emissions of cars imported into New Zealand are significantly higher than in Europe, the United States, China, India or Brazil, according to estimates supplied by the Transport Ministry.

Toyota New Zealand chief executive Neeraj Lala told the select committee in November that the Government’s 2027 target of 63g/km for cars was too ambitious and suggested it could lead to smaller car brands exiting the country.

Ford New Zealand managing director Simon Rutherford told the committee that New Zealand should aspire to be a “fast follower”, rather than aiming to overtake Europe in transforming its vehicle industry.

Some of the car makers, including Ford, stressed that it would take time for their overseas parents to prioritise providing lower emission vehicles to New Zealand, as it was a small right-hand drive market that was lumped in with Australia.

Electric car maker Tesla was a dissenting voice among the manufacturers, advising MPs that big car manufacturers were rehashing “old and disproved arguments” to try to persuade the committee to water down the proposed carbon targets.

It had said that instead of recommending relaxing the targets, the select committee should recommend increasing the financial penalties on car importers that failed to meet them.

The proposed penalties on new cars that exceeded the emissions targets were considerably less than those applied in Europe, while even further discounted penalties on higher-emission secondhand cars were “just too low to drive behavioural change”, it had told the committee.

However, the committee did not recommend amending the penalties.