Government announces one million electric cars initiative

Jacinda Ardern announced:

The Climate Change Commission has recommended that petrol car imports be banned within 15 years. We have listened to the many submissions from industry groups stating that such a policy could result in a car shortage in New Zealand as there may not be enough affordable electric cars in production by then to allow Kiwi households to make the transition.

To guarantee an emissions free future but protect hard working families, the Government has decided to invest in an initiative to produce affordable electric cars in New Zealand. We believe the Government can use economies of scale and cheap capital to manufacture affordable emission free cars.

Our target is to build one million electric cars over the next ten years. This will be done through recycling $4 billion of capital to produce the first 100,000 cars and then reinvesting the proceeds of sale in the next tranche.

This initiative will be called KiwiCar and will be the responsibility of Transport Minister Michael Wood and Environment Minister David Parker. Full details of the programme will be released in the Budget on 20 May 2021.

Frankly the Government would be better to invest $4 billion in Tesla stock than to try and compete with the motor industry by producing our own cars. I suspect this will end up a huge failure.