Report tackles fleet issues
The Motor Trade Association (MTA) says a major report it has commissioned contains in-depth information on the automotive landscape and is a resource the entire industry can benefit from.
Called The Current and Future State of the New Zealand Vehicle Fleet and Industry, it has been completed by the NZ Institute of Economic Research (NZIER).
The electrification of the fleet, increased in-vehicle technology and a drop in car ownership over the next two decades are among the issues it tackles.
“The NZIER has provided an informative and thought-provoking analysis with implications not only for the industry but government and communities,” says Simon Bradwell, pictured, the MTA’s head of communications. “It offers a roadmap into the future.”
For example, the fleet’s electrification will reduce demand for general repairs because EVs have fewer moving parts. The switch is forecast to be relatively gradual over the next decade before speeding up.
The report, which can be found online at https://mta.org.nz/industry-hub/industry-research-insights-forecasts, also says the increasing use of technology in vehicles will make them more reliable, with faults identified earlier, and less likely to be involved in crashes.
On the flipside, cars will be more expensive to fix because of the “investment required to undertake repairs, and need for access to proprietary data and information”. The NZIER adds there could be less demand for new models in the future and vehicles will stay in the fleet for longer.
Sales by motive power
The report for the MTA says the small proportion of EVs in New Zealand’s light fleet is the result of relatively low sales of fully electric models.
By contrast, there has been a significant increase in the proportion of new registrations that are petro hybrids, such as the Toyota Prius.
From 2,726 registrations in 2015, the number of hybrid petrol vehicles jumped to 75,140 in 2024, representing 31 per cent of all new sales that year. In particular, petrol hybrids have made up a large proportion of used imports in recent years.
“There was significant growth in 2023 following the introduction of the clean car standard, which incentivised importers to bring in more fuel-efficient vehicles,” states the NZIER’s report.
While petrol models comprised 79 per cent of total registrations in 2015, they only represented 42 per cent of vehicles sold in 2024 with the growth in the proportion of petrol hybrids accounting for almost all of that decrease.
“By contrast, EV registrations in 2024 were only 8,209 – three per cent of new-vehicle registrations. However, they were as high as 27,290 in 2023, and 10 per cent of new-vehicle registrations, before the clean car discount was removed. Plug-in hybrids [PHEVs] accounted for another 4,573 sales in 2023 and 11,960 in 2023.
“In part this was due to buyers pulling forward their purchases of EVs and PHEVs ahead of the discount being removed.”
To put those numbers in perspective, 20 per cent of all worldwide car sales in 2024 were EVs although this masks significant global variation. Nearly half of all new cars registered in China were electrified with about 30 per cent being PHEVs. In Europe, around 20 per cent of new cars were EVs and in the US it was about 10 per cent.
The May issue of Autofile has a deep dive into the report. Click here to download the magazine.
