Aside from the catch-ups, novel ideas and comfort food, Fieldays offers the chance to practise a skill that Kiwis aren’t usually known for – haggling.
The haggle has an all-too-familiar rhythm to it. Features are communicated and the value is made obvious, before the all-important point of price comes up. Salespeople, armed with freshly printed price lists, fire Fieldays specials in every direction – 5% here, or maybe a push to 15% with flexible payment terms.
This year, I stepped up the art of the haggle, moving from friendly Fieldays salespeople to the most notorious hagglers of them all: car dealers.
I was toying with idea of a new electric car (EV) when I walked onto the lot.
The dance started. They went straight for the heart by outlining why an EV was good for me, the family and the environment. Once they could see they had won my heart, they went for my head by throwing features everywhere.
Then came the all-important point – price. Rather than the token 5% off, this line of cars had close to 50% off the recommended retail price.
Adrian Orr’s monetary policy is working as intended in our household, so we are in no position to actually purchase a new car this year – but the 50%-off deal made me question raiding the kids’ piggy bank to make something work.
Off the lot, I started thinking about the many questions that lie behind a discount that big. On the surface, it looks as though a combination of factors have contributed to the decline in EV sales – a tight economy, the looming introduction of newer tech such as hydrogen cars, or a late arrival of cars now clogging lot yards.
When I dig slightly deeper, however, the sale of electric vehicles paints an interesting picture of the current state of New Zealand.
One year ago, when I was penning the first article for this column, EV sales were at record highs. Close to 26,000 new EVs were registered over the course of 2023, which is equivalent to somewhere between 25% and 33% of all vehicles registered in New Zealand.
Fast-forward to today, and sales have flatlined, with only 2000 EVs being added during the first five months of 2024 – less than 4% of the New Zealand “new” fleet.
Looking at sustainability more broadly than the current price of an EV, it strikes me that the mood for environmental policy intervention across New Zealand might have changed. The fall in EV sales correlates closely with two big moves from the government: the removal of the clean car discount and the announcement that agricultural emissions will remain outside of the Emissions Trading Scheme.
The time of clean car discounts and He Waka Eke Noa represented somewhat of a first innings of incentivising change to improve the environment. A first go that may have been directionally correct, but impractical to implement when the theory met reality.
This second innings has a different feel to it. It seems to be focused on finding solutions that are built on private investment, rather than relying on dished-out, publicly funded incentives. In this innings, purchasing an EV must make sense even when the clean car subsidy is removed.
I have sat through many presentations recently focused on solving environmental problems; they all end the same way – we know what to do, we just need the funding to achieve it.
The blocker to funding in a lot of cases is the fact that these solutions rely on someone, usually the government, having to eat the loss to achieve the greater environmental good. The appetite to do that has clearly changed.
This government is refusing to step in as the funder of last resort – hoping instead that we have reached tipping points where the financial rationales and environmental outcomes have finally lined up.
Its hope is that the sales pitch from the EV salesperson is strong enough for me to open my wallet without the clean car discount, or that the food & fibre sector can outsmart the methane problem through on-farm efficiencies and some new tech just around the corner.
We’ll find out shortly with the release of the coalition government’s climate plan.
As for the car, this stellar deal was picked up by my mother-in-law, who already has an abundance of rooftop solar. Adding a well-priced electric vehicle only makes the cost savings more compelling for her. A few panels tipped her decision into the financial-environmental sweet spot, without the need for the taxpayer to eat a cost.
Our second innings will need a lot more rational solutions like this one.
