The Motor Industry Association will ask the government to ease back on its targets for new vehicle carbon emissions.
Photo: 123RF
The association said there had been a significant drop in carbon emissions from new vehicles over the past year, but not enough to meet the reductions set out in the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill, currently before Parliament.
More than 25,000 new vehicles powered by some form of electrification were sold in New Zealand last year, which was a 94 percent increase on the previous year.
However, association chief executive David Crawford said the transition was not fast enough to avoid the government's looming clean car standard penalties from next year.
He said failure to meet the targets could add between 15 to 20 percent to the cost of new vehicles by 2027.
The data indicates the sector would have needed to reduce the average emissions by 10 percent last year, which was short of the 4.7 percent reduction achieved.
Crawford said the main issue was the supply of right-hand drive electric vehicles.
"We can't get them quick enough, and if we can't get them quick enough, then it doesn't matter how hard the targets are that the government sets -- we won't get there."
Crawford said the targets should be set to follow European targets by a lag of two years.
"There's no way we can lead Europe because we're not a big enough market. It's just not worth the manufacturers trying to build right-hand drive vehicles for a market that is tiny on a world scale."
The association submitted its emissions data to the government officials for consideration.