It's been a tough year for NZ's EV market, with scrapped government subsidies for electric vehicles and the end of exemptions from road user charges. File photo. Photo: 123RF
A New Zealand manufacturer of EV chargers says it is switching its focus to the Australian market, partly because of New Zealand's plunging EV sales.
Evnex is a Christchurch-based manufacturer of EV chargers for homes and businesses.
Founder Ed Harvey says with Australian sales on the rise, the company can raise capital more easily across the Tasman.
He said Australian government subsidies have helped their EV sales overtake New Zealand's sales, which have fallen from 27 percent of new cars last year to 8 percent so far this year.
So far Evnex has around 6000 chargers in New Zealand and 1000 in Australia, but Harvey expected Australian volumes to overtake New Zealand's within the next two or three months.
It's been a tough year for New Zealand's EV market, with scrapped government subsidies for electric vehicles, the end of exemptions from road user charges and the news that upcoming tailpipe emissions standards for vehicle imports were being weakened.
Until last year, Australia was one of the only developed countries not to have tailpipe emissions standards, and new cars entering its fleet were dirtier on average than New Zealand's.
But now Australia has both tailpipe standards and EV subsidies and Harvey said that was reflected in sales.
"The Australian market has actually overtaken New Zealand's market share quite significantly over the last 12-18 months," he said.
"New Zealand used to be a leader in EVs, we used to have much higher market share of electric vehicles than Australia, but is has completely switched and Australia now has much more supportive EV policy than New Zealand, and we're really seeing it."
Evnex has just raised a "considerable amount" of money from an Australian private equity firm, and Harvey said it was only possible because of its exposure to the Australian market. He said Evnex's market share remained strong in New Zealand, but the main growth was in Australia.
"It is pretty tough in New Zealand at the moment, electric vehicle registrations have dropped back significantly. Most of our team growth, our investment is going into our Sydney office and we're going to be putting a lot of our resource into Australia for the foreseeable future," said Harvey.
Evnex makes smart chargers, which means they are able to communicate with the electricity network and switch on at times when there is plenty of renewable, lower cost electricity, and switch off at times when supply is constrained.
It's this type of charger that Simon Mackenzie, chief executive of Auckland lines company Vector, wants to see in every home with an EV.
Vector has been lobbying for smart charging capability to be compulsory for people installing fast chargers for years.
The company already communicates via smart chargers with Auckland's electric buses when they charge at their New Lynn terminal, encouraging them to recharge at off-peak times to smooth demand on the power network.
Mackenzie said a slower, three-prong home charger did not have much effect on the network, but a fast home charger can draw about half as much power at once as an entire home, so if 10 homes in a small stretch of street all had these, that can be a problem.
"We don't want everyone plugging their vehicle in and wanting to charge at exactly the same time, such as when they get home from work. If you get a lot of those down a street and everything in the home is [also] turned on, you start getting challenges with the capacity in the network."
Vector ran a successful trial with 200 Evnex chargers to smooth demand by getting cars to charge overnight, at times of low demand. Mackenzie said customer feedback was positive and the customers were not inconvenienced.
Mackenzie said it would save Vector - and households - money if smart charging was more common, because the lines company would not need to build as much extra capacity.
Auckland's number of household electricity connections is growing fast - and the city is also a national hotspot for EVs.
But Vector's EV tracker showed wide variation in EV penetration between suburbs, with Auckland Central, East Tamaki, Remuera and Henderson having the highest numbers. Onehunga, New Lynn and Avondale had the fewest.
"If you're putting in a lot of EV connections and you have to upgrade the network, the question becomes why should that cost be socialised across everyone because there's big pockets of Auckland with very low EV penetration and they shouldn't be burdened with the cost of that," said Mackenzie.
Vector's market research found 63 per cent of people said ditching EV subsidies would impact their decision whether to buy an electric car, however almost half of respondents were still considering buying an EV or electric hybrid, many within the next two years.
With petrol prices still high, Mackenzie wanted the charging network to be ready for future growth, even if, for now, the Australians have overtaken New Zealand on uptake rates.