Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Energy and Resources): Since the Labour members are asking me to speak—all right. I actually think that we are in danger of course of having peace break out which is a good thing. Electric vehicles are something—and I will address some of the concerns raised by the previous two speakers—I am quite keen on and I think a lot of members of Parliament are. They are quite expensive at the moment but there is a really simple way around that: manufacturers could start making cheaper cars and some already are doing that. The thing is that cars—whether they are petrol-powered diesel-powered or electric-powered—come in all sorts of different models and different prices and at the moment there is just not the large second-hand market in New Zealand that we are used to having and do have in terms of petrol and diesel.Sue Moroney: You could help with that.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Ms Moroney has just called out that we could solve that by having all the Government fleet in it. Well possibly except that there is another little issue and that is the issue of how long batteries last in these cars and what is happening to those batteries at the end of it. I have had the privilege of going to see electric cars being made and one particular make of car has batteries—multiple batteries—that actually form the chassis of the car essentially. This works really well until I said: Well what happens when they die?". The answer was they are guaranteed for 10 years. I said "Well in New Zealand 10 years does not make an old car. So what happens then?" and the answer was: "Oh well you could get a new one." I said "How much is that?" and it is US$25000 and I said: "Well that's all a bit difficult." Then the other issue I raised was about recycling and what happens with the environmental disposal of it.So I think it is not everything but I think the electric vehicle certainly does deal with some of the emissions issues that we have and I think that it is actually the way of the future and all these things are going to come to fruition. Of course every carmaker would love us to be able to give all sorts of subsidies and of course some countries do but they are also countries that give subsidies for everything else and we pretty much got rid of those. A cheeky question could be what happens when they are crushed and of course there could be issues particularly if those batteries are so much part of the chassis. But anyway I think it is certainly very interesting.In terms of things like the use of the bus lanes or the special lanes or whatever—that is why this bill does not actually say that they are going to be using them; it actually gives the ability of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) and also local authorities to decide which of these special lanes can be used for electric vehicles. The point is well made that not all of these special lanes are going to be suitable either because of the vast numbers of buses going through them or various other reasons so that is going to be left up to the local authorities and the New Zealand Transport Agency to decide.I think it is also quite good to deal with an issue around how else we can encourage them. The point was made that we could have a Government fleet of them. That is obviously not a part of this bill. I would also hasten to add that you want to be a bit careful with that—that you do not try to determine when for instance police cars would all be electric. That might be a weenie bit of a problem given the time that it takes to charge cars at the moment and even the super chargers that are available—one is available in Hamilton; another one I think is being opened up on the Napier-Taupo road—take about 35 minutes to charge. Otherwise a vehicle could take 3 to 4 hours to charge and you cannot just sit around saying you are going to wait for the police car to charge up. I think electric vehicles are going to become even more popular in New Zealand when we end up with them taking as little time to charge as it does for people to put petrol or diesel in their car. Then I think we are really talking. Personally I think that they are the way of the future and it is just a matter of making sure that we get enough volume coming through. So this is something to encourage that.I have visited places like Norway and California in particular to look at some of the things that they are doing around electric vehicles and both of those countries do have this provision around electric vehicles being able to use special lanes. They do consider that as something that encourages them. Norway of course puts big taxes on imports of cars generally but they do not have those on electric vehicles. They suggested that we could not put big taxes on top of electric vehicles so I had to point out that we do not actually put big taxes on top of vehicles that are imported into the country in the first place which they thought was unusual. I said we got rid of it in the 1980s; we are a free-market country. The other issue that California suggested is that we might like to make all of our car manufacturers manufacture electric vehicles which is what they have brought in and I said that would be excellent too except that we do not manufacture any cars so that is not going to work is it? So really we are down to these particular lanes.We also have something else that we do for electric vehicles and electric vehicles owners and that is that they do not contribute to the cost of the roads and that is something that people need to realise. When diesel users pay their road-user charges they are paying towards the money that goes into the National Land Transport Fund. In addition to that people who pay for petrol—we are actually paying for that as well and that is part of the cost. About 90c of the litre cost of petrol actually goes towards our road transport; that pays not only for the roads themselves but also policing of the roads. A big chunk of that goes into road policing and it also goes towards public transport as well. It helps to meet the costs of public transport so actually people who pay for petrol and diesel are contributing on a user-pays basis plus they are also contributing to public transport. Electric vehicle owners are actually being given an exemption which is being carried over so that they do not contribute to that. So they are getting quite a substantial drop in the costs that they would otherwise be paying for and that is because the roads are not generally paid out of the consolidated fund—out of the general budget.I think it is really important that we understand that we are giving certain subsidies and I think what is going to happen is that as charging stations become more available as people get their heads around the fact that they can actually buy second-hand electric vehicles from places like Japan or that manufacturers start producing cars that do not have to be at the luxury end of the market all the time and start bringing in the competition that there is in the petrol and diesel markets we are going to find more electric vehicles becoming more commonly seen and used in New Zealand. For many people if you lived at home and you normally travelled in the car to the city or dropped off kids and various other things that people do an electric vehicle makes a lot of sense particularly if you can charge up the vehicle at night and it is fully going in the morning. But there is still quite some time to go.I can also tell the Committee because I know that you will be interested—I hope that you will be interested—that I have seen electric trucks being put together too and I know that there is an electric bus being trialled at this stage in Wellington. I went to the place where this is being manufactured in San Francisco—by a New Zealander I should say Mr Ian Wright who is one of the founders of Tesla by the way; just a plug for New Zealanders in there. I think things like garbage trucks or rubbish trucks are being converted over for electric motors and what this means of course—it makes a lot of sense because they are going out during the day or night and they are coming back again back to the station. They are not going on long treks anywhere. It would also deal with issues like noise pollution which I think is a really important thing particularly in cities as well as the emissions.So it all seems to make sense but I think we just need to learn sometimes to crawl before we can run. In this case we are making steady changes and improvements and I think we have made some very sensible improvements that do not unduly penalise other road users but do actually give some really great incentives. Living in Auckland as I do any chance to be able to use those special lanes would be much welcomed and may well encourage me down the path next time I come to buy a vehicle to move into the electric space. Sitting behind all those other cars I would just love to be able to whizz by and do so legally. Thank you."