Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. It is my pleasure to take a call in this Committee stage debate on the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I just want to highlight that this bill aims to encourage energy innovation so I commend those on the Commerce Committee who have heard submissions. I do have a question for the Minister in the chair—but a little preamble before I get there.I am particularly interested in new section 22AB(1)(r) inserted by clause 17 in Part 3 as my colleague Michael Wood has previously quoted. It really is from the departmental disclosure statement about the empowerment through this piece of legislation of road-controlling authorities to enable electric vehicles as well as plug-in hybrid vehicles that operate on a combination of externally charged batteries or petrol or diesel motor to be able to use what are currently designated as lanes for trucks buses or cars that have multiple occupants. I think the aspiration within this bill is really about increasing the number of electric vehicles we have in New Zealand. Currently we have 2000 and I know there is an aspiration that by 2021 there will be 64000.I have found it interesting looking at the history of electric vehicles and please bear with me. The first electric vehicle was created in 1832 by Scottish inventor Robert Anderson. It is really interesting because in 1899 electric vehicles were seen as being the car of the future. Having had a look at the history in 1900 the electric automobile in its heyday—so of 4192 cars produced in the United States 20 percent were powered by electricity. By 1920 however there was a decline because of the viability of electric vehicles. The electric car's downfall was attributed to a number of factors including the desire for longer-distance vehicles their lack of horsepower and the readily available gasoline. In the 1970s we saw a re-emergence of electric vehicles because of soaring prices of oil—from the Arab oil embargo of 1973. Also then there was the emergence of environmental issues and the quest to look at and explore the viability of electric vehicles. In February of 2009 the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 allocated $2 billion for the development of electric vehicle batteries and related technologies. The Department of Energy added another $400 million to fund building the infrastructure necessary to support plug-in electric vehicles. Just to finish this contribution from this particular research the challenges are seen as being price—as my colleague Sue Moroney has highlighted—limited battery life and travel range and building charging stations and other infrastructure to support electric vehicles.So I have seen that in New Zealand we have 20 charging stations—I may be wrong. There is an aspiration to have another 80 by December next year. That costs approximately $60000 per charging station. So we need an investment of $4.8 million and it seems the private sector is putting its hand up. I have seen a press release from BMW and ChargeNet. Their aspiration is to create a network from Kaitaia to Invercargill. We have two pure electric vehicles on sale in New Zealand. They are the BMW i3 and the Renault Zoe. These charging stations apparently can charge a vehicle to 80 percent in 20 minutes for a cost of $14.Where I am going with this question is that I am aware of a trial—and this is what I would like the Minister to answer—in March of this year for 2 weeks on five motorway on-ramps and off-ramps in Auckland. In Auckland we have registered 1033 electric vehicles and so before I guess implementing this piece of legislation we wanted to actually look at whether or not the intention of that new section 22AB(1)(r) inserted by clause 17 in Part 3 was going to be utilised by those who own electric vehicles. From what I have been able to ascertain Auckland Transport also said we need an information campaign because people need to know that the vehicles that are using those special lanes for trucks buses and cars with multiple occupants need some sort of sticker I think so that the public becomes aware of why these cars are cruising down in lanes that actually have been reserved for those purposes. The New Zealand Transport Agency was to survey the owners of electric vehicles and I am really interested in the results. I am hoping that the Minister has those—that was in March this year.It was quite interesting to note that organisations like Mercury Energy have 42 electric cars—these are of those 1033 registered electric vehicles in Auckland—Vector has 12 and Air New Zealand has 75 and it seemed that Air New Zealand was the one who was going to maximise that 2-week trial and so I am very interested to know. So if the Minister could provide that information I think it would justify the inclusion of this particular amendment to the Land Transport Act of 1998 in this particular piece of legislation.Just finally I would like to do a bit of a shout-out to a man called Toa Greening who is a resident of Manurewa. Toa came to see me in 2014 because he had this aspiration to bring a Tango model MINI electric vehicle which at that time was priced at $230000 but if somebody—I think he was hoping it would be Wellington City Council—was going to order 2000 of these electric vehicles he could have got the price down to $29000. I know Toa has been very active in this area and in fact in 2015 Auckland Transport put out a tender for a partner operator for a citywide car-sharing scheme that utilised plug-in electric vehicles. What they were wanting to do was to obviously increase the demand of traffic on our roads and increase the uptake of those who were willing to buy electric vehicles. They initially wanted a fleet of 200 to 300 cars. They envisaged 350 charging stations across the city. They had nine proposals. But I believe—and maybe the Minister can answer this question—that tender was never filled.Auckland Transport has been active in this space for a few years. I think it is working with Cityhop to increase the number of electric vehicle users which is a good thing. The reality of the situation that we are facing into the future is that we cannot be reliant on fossil fuels so any work that we can do to encourage the purchasing of electric vehicles—I personally do not have an electric vehicle. I have had a look at what a Mitsubishi Outlander would cost and I think it is about 80 grand. So maybe when I am looking at updating my car I will look at those options.In some ways I do think that that provision in the legislation new section 22AB(1)(r) inserted by clause 17 in Part 3 will encourage people to purchase electric vehicles particularly if you live in South Auckland and are trying to get into the Auckland CBD—if I can use a car lane that only trucks buses and those with high-occupancy vehicles can use it will be an incentive for me.But I am just wanting to be reassured as the House is Minister from the research and the evidence that it has actually been successful—that particular trial that I highlighted. If there is any information I think it will be wonderful if you shared that with the House tonight because not only am I interested and my colleagues here in the House but I think anybody listening to this debate will want to make sure that the provisions in this legislation and the changes to legislation are actually being done for reasons that have some evidence behind them—we are not just window dressing but actually we do have some compelling evidence to say that there is some efficacy in these proposals given that it is one of the specific changes that this piece of legislation will empower. Kia ora.