Boost for EV charging stations in budget

Public Policy / news

The Government wants an EV charging station in every settlement with more than 2000 people as it also eyes large EV hubs

18th May 23, 2:27pm by Eric Frykberg

Terry Baucher says as an interim measure to encourage greater take up of EVs the Government could consider exempting EVs from FBT until the new emission-based FBT rules are in place.

The Government wants to have an electric vehicle (EV) charging centre in every town with a population of 2000 or more.

This was announced in Thursday's budget.

It will also expand the national network of EV charging hubs – each containing up to 20 chargers – by 23, bringing the total up to 25 hubs. These will be done in conjunction with the private sector.

The aim is to make sure there is a charging hub every 150–200 kilometres on main highways and a public charger for every 20-40 EVs in urban areas.

The cost of this will be $120 million over four years.

“We’re making sure there are more locations for people to ‘tank up’ their EVs,” says the Minister of Energy and Resources Megan Woods.

“We’ll also ensure rural and regional communities have more options to charge up EVs so a lack of chargers is no longer seen as a barrier to electric vehicle adoption as we decarbonise our energy system.”

The Government believes emissions from light vehicles are the single largest source of transport emissions in New Zealand, partially due to the presence of many older and comparatively dirty cars on the roads.

“This costs Kiwis at the pump and is damaging to our health and the environment,” says Transport Minister Michael Wood.

“Switching to EVs would be like buying petrol for 40c a litre, which will make a big difference for household budgets.”

In addition, there is a programme to improve the environmental standards of heavy vehicles like trucks and buses. The aim is to get about 500 low emission heavy vehicles onto New Zealand’s roads, at a cost of $30 million over three years.

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34 Comments

by M0ralHazard | 18th May 23, 3:17pm 1684379874

Have they announced when RUCs will be applied to EVs?

by chebbo | 18th May 23, 3:29pm 1684380551

April 1st 2024.

by Chris-M | 18th May 23, 3:47pm 1684381668

More to the point. What are they doing to facilitate the enormous changes to the electricity distribution network and its management that are needed to support electric transport. Not to mention the large increase in renewable power generation; or will we just burn more coal in Huntly.

They are great at fiddling around the periphery and dodging the important issues.

by redcows1 | 18th May 23, 3:50pm 1684381825

Isn't there a market for that?

by Chris-M | 19th May 23, 10:42am 1684449720

Which is manifestly not working

Give you an example. Vectors peak load is about 2000 MW, EVs etc will push this up to about 5000MW. This could be lowered to a bit less than 4,000 MW with a bunch of investment in smart load control. Which ever way you look at there is a massive investment required from Vector. Trouble is that the Commerce Commission has them so tightly pinned down on their cost recoveries that they are falling well short of making an adequate return on their existing investment. How the hell can they possibly fund about a doubling of their investment almost over night (well comparitively very quickly)? In your much lauded free market, why should an investor put another cent into the company? And yet the government keeps pumping more EV's and electrical load into the system. What do you think that the end point is going to be if we continue down this track?

Transpower will be similarly very challenged.

Funny about the Commerce Commission. If you are Fletcher's, the supermarkets, the oil companies, the power generation companies and all the big corporates, the Com Com will let let you rip off the public as much as you wish. Vector with significant user cooperative ownership are absolutely screwed by them. It is tempting to suggest that the Com Com are trying to punish Vector because the Auckland council stopped it from being lost to the big corporates. Who's interests do the Com Com really serve?

by Pragmatist | 19th May 23, 12:08am 1684411719

Why would EVs be charging at peak time? The vast bulk will charge offpeak, most overnight from whenever the cheap rates kick in till charged, or with a scheduled departure charging algorithm so starting whenever needed to complete charging by 6am. Sure, there will be some increase in mostly daytime demand from EVs on road trips using fast chargers, but that is going to be fairly insignificant except long weekends.

And your numbers are trash anyway. 3000MW = 3,000,000kW, which would be 400,000EVs all charging at the same time at 7kW which is the max rate most EV home chargers can supply. Not all EVs can charge that fast, and you assume 400,000 of them all charging at the same time, in peak hours in Auckland? Complete nonsense.

by solardb | 19th May 23, 9:43am 1684446225

Many would not even have to charge every day , though they probably would anyway . But smart grid management is the way to go , its in the customers interest too , as long as their are cheaper rates for discretionary charging / hot water diversion etc.

by Chris-M | 19th May 23, 10:39am 1684449565

Of course. Vector have been well aware of this for a very long time and have factored that into the lower of their two projections. But load management does not happen spontaneously in a vacuum. It takes government planning and regulation, implementation and a good dollop of money.

by sparrow | 19th May 23, 11:14am 1684451655

Financial incentives can be used to encourage people to spread demand, it's happening already.

by solardb | 19th May 23, 10:16pm 1684491401

Good they are looking at this.

As far as industrial heat goes , i think they need to be realistic and keep gas in the meanwhile Probably need biomass or methane long term.

Agree we need to invest heavily, sooner the better.

by Chris-M | 19th May 23, 10:31am 1684449099

The figures came from Simon McKenzie. CEO Vector at an AGM. Given that the Peak load of Auckland without EVs is 2,000 mw, 3000 mw is only 1,000 mW extra. Using your 7KW per charger that equates to 133,000 cars. The population of Auckland is about 1.5 Million so 133,000 cars looks very light and Vectors figures of a bit less than 4,000 MW look pretty reasonable.

But there is more. Trucks, Trains and the government are trying to stop gas and liquid fuels being used for process heat, household heat and replace this with electricity. The demand from just one of these industrial processes is measured in 100's of kW up to megawatts. Look around the average house gas space heating, gas cook top, gas water heating. Each of these are pretty chunky loads. I think Vectors figures look pretty realistic if not conservative.

by Pragmatist | 19th May 23, 12:05pm 1684454720

Wow, those goal posts moved from 5000MW to 3000MW pretty quickly.

And again, you are assuming they all charge at the same time, personally I only charge once a week if its just my normal to and fro from work

As I said your original numbers are complete BS when you were trying to make EVs look bad. I see you have edited your post already.

Process heat is a seperate issue, some of that will move to heat pump solutions if the heeded temperatures are low enough, some will move to other non-electric sources, but yes, network upgrades will be needed, and they will be paying commercial connection rates to Vector or Transpower which can pay off the cost of that infrastructure over the next 15-30 years.

by Chris-M | 19th May 23, 12:38pm 1684456702

Learn to read

3000 was your figure

5,000 was vectors worst case uncontrolled figure (my rounded off for example figure, my 1-2 year memory is a bit over 5,000)

4,000 was vectors load managed figure (my rounded off for example figure, my 1-2 year memory is about 3,500-4,0000)

Heat pumps can head water and houses, great

Heat pumps cannot cook food

Heat pumps have little practical application for industrial heat above 120 C. In all the industrial situations that I have dealt with apart from space heating, heat pumps would be useless. (basic laws of thermodynamics)

I am not trying to make EVs look bad. (but in the meantime unless you generate your own solar power, you would contribute more to reducing CO2 emissions with a good Hybrid) I am trying to point out that we cannot just load them into the country without addressing the demands that they bring, otherwise their will be a huge disaster, they will loose all credibility and we will revert to transport and power generation systems that will increase CO2 emissions. It may take a long time to recover that situation and all the while the world is getting hotter.

by Pragmatist | 19th May 23, 1:19pm 1684459168

I'm quite capable of reading, and they were both your figures. 5000 in your first post, then 3000 in your second.

And of course while you are making out about the poor lines companies are going to have to pay for all these upgrades you are of course overlooking that they tend to charge (a large part of) network upgrades through to the customers that request them, ask any developer what the cost of new connections for a subdivision are, it's sure not the cost of running a few cables, if the transformer needs upgrading you are on the hook for that.

by Chris-M | 19th May 23, 2:54pm 1684464865

you really need to go back and read the whole trail carefully.

by Pragmatist | 19th May 23, 6:25pm 1684477535

3000 was the difference between your 2000MW and 5000MW in your first post.

I have read and understood, but you still keep talking nonsense.

No, a petrol hybrid is not cleaner than an EV, even if we only look at CO2e, and ignore the rest of the emissions. There is rather a lot of emissions in the extraction and processing of petrol, the figure I've seen is 720g CO2e per litre, which would put it above all except the dirtiest of coal powered generation fuelled EVs.

by Peter Olorenshaw | 20th May 23, 9:56am 1684533378

Chris I think you have this quite wrong. The peak generation is what determines the need for new generation sources and EVs offer not just the chance of being charged in the dead of the night when there is very little other load on the grid, but also offer the ability to feed some of that nighttime power back into the grid in the evening (and morning) peak(s). You may or may not know that Nissan Leafs have always had this capability with their Chademo charging cable configuration and some of the latest cars using CCS cables also can do this. At present you need a special wall-box to feed back into the grid and that costs some $10k, but bound to come down in price rapidly. So people could come home from work, plug their car in and feed some remaining power back into the grid (always keeping say 20% left in their batteries for an energy trip to the hospital for instance). Then come 10 or 11pm they start charging up their cars in that big dip in demand and spot prices are very very low, to be fully topped up by the time the morning peaks starts coming in. Secondly and this is important, lithium batteries are significantly different from other battery chemistries with battery degradation primarily though simple calendar raging, not number of charging cycles. Flip the Fleet found that actually the cars that were driven more had better batteries for their age! So if people could buy the power to charge their cars at that low spot rate in the middle of the night and feed back into the grid at peak times, being handsomely rewarded for this and it having minimal if any effect on they vehicles longevity why wouldn't they? and with lots of solar power going in some of these EVs that are parked at a charger would be able to soak up some of the mid-day solar power for use in the evenings. So I think that EVs will actually become an integral part of our energy solution.

by Peter Olorenshaw | 20th May 23, 10:16pm 1684577791

See my other post the amount of electricity infrastructure we need is primarily determined by the Peak Power needs. And this is where EVs are a real boon, not a drag on the gird. So rather than any new infrastructure to support EVs it will be there. reverse, EVs will provide grid support - not just filling in the troughs in demand with their charging in the dead of the night, but also by feeding back into the grid at peak times. So basically we all need to move to time of day, time of year pricing of electricity then its job done without any new infrastructure. Look at what people do simply by changing to an EV friendly power charging regime like Meridians free power from 9pm to midnight. This is pretty sill and should really be base doin the spot price which almost falls to zero in the dead of the night and this is when people should be and will be charging their EVs (and cooling down their freezers, running their dishwashers, driers, washing machines) and furthermore not only will the EV loads be in this trough in demand but EVs will be feeding back into the grid at peaks times helping to support the grid. We’ve got some 15,000 used Nissan Leafs here in NZ already, let alone new ones that have grid feedback capability built in. If we assumed 10kWh* from 15,000 Nissan Leafs then that is 150MWh. In comparison the much celebrated big Tesla grid battery in South Australia (which doesn’t use cars) is 200MWh - so its not much less than this celebrated big battery, just from our old Leafs already here in NZ. And many of the newest EVs have this capability even if they have CCS rather than Chademo charging cables. Lithium batteries primary degradation is though simple calendar ageing, not number of cycles, so if you car battery is just gradually degrading anyway and you could buy power very cheaply in the dead of the night to charge up your car and then sell it at a handsome profit some of the surplus** into the gird at peak times why wouldn't you?

* The First Nissan Leafs that came out had 24kWh batteries, next model had 30kWh, New shape ones have 40-64kWh so assuming 10kWh from every Leaf is surely not too far out for this back of an envelope calculation.

** With most cars only travelling 50km or so per day and yet having ranges more than double that for old Nissan Leafs, let alone the newer cars, almost all EVs have significant residual power left in their batteries at the end of the day, even if 20% was always left in reserve for an emergency trio eg to the hospital.

by chebbo | 18th May 23, 3:55pm 1684382139

I wonder (not really) if we'll see rolling brownouts again this winter. There are more EVs and less woodburners around than last year.

by WellingtonInvestor | 19th May 23, 3:52pm 1684468349

They schedule brownouts in South Africa . Although they call them something else, load leveling or something like that.

NZ needs ore hydro, as lakes are an energy store. You can't store wind or solar, and solar only generates power during the day.

by WellingtonInvestor | 19th May 23, 3:50pm 1684468214

Guessing when it becomes a 'crisis' they may look at that.

by Speedmax | 18th May 23, 4:00pm 1684382408

Excellent move in the right direction, though not very ambitious over 4 years by which time many more will be required

by Hamish | 18th May 23, 6:19pm 1684390788

Was reading recently that in the UK the number of public charging points to number of EVS continues to decline as a ratio, i.e. there's more competition for public chargers now. The article didn't mention how much this is offset by increasing range on EV models now vs then.

by JohnfromtheTron | 18th May 23, 4:44pm 1684385076

“Switching to EVs would be like buying petrol for 40c a litre, which will make a big difference for household budgets.”

Households just need to budget the $30-$50,000 for a good EV.

by WellingtonInvestor | 19th May 23, 3:55pm 1684468511

Prices will come down. The good thing is that battery technologies should allow future generations to store 1000kms + of energy. That will solve a lot of the problems with EVs. The problem is that we are going to have a large EV fleet that will have limited range, especially as they age, and lower income people will have some pretty low range cars.

by Pragmatist | 19th May 23, 5:46pm 1684475191

This is already proving to be nonsense, tesla recently revealed that the 10yo cars that they built have on average only lost 12% of their battery capacity. Once the Nissan leafs finally fall out of the system maybe this will go away. Hyundai ioniqs and other older EVs seem to hold up well.

The other problem with building giant batteries in cars is that 99% of the time you are hauling aroung several hundred kgs of deadweight. Once you get over 100kWh you really are in overkill for a typical passenger car, that is >600kms open road driving without a stop, which is just unnecessary in NZ.

by WellingtonInvestor | 19th May 23, 6:03pm 1684476196

New generation batteries will be smaller and lighter with far more capacity. So larger capacity won't increase the size and weight in the future. But it will make many EVs unattractive to buy due to the low range. It is the range and hassle charging when away from home that puts people off buying them.

by nguturoa | 18th May 23, 5:17pm 1684387062

Will the charging cost be subsidied as public transport is half price.

by Prickle | 19th May 23, 10:54am 1684450473

Can I charge my e bike at an ev charging centre?

by solardb | 19th May 23, 10:09pm 1684490974

No.

by The Person | 19th May 23, 9:59pm 1684490382

how does the funding work. Charging networks are private right? Ignoring the odd occasional lines company charge point.

So government is rolling out it's own network? Government is paying for private business to rollout their network? Is it a grant, is it a loan? Is it like the broadband network with Chorus?

by profile | 20th May 23, 8:42am 1684528961

Why don't wealthy EV owning virtue signallers crowd fund their own EV chargers rather than bludge off the working man? Is an industry that utilises Congolese kids and hasn't figured out how to recycle dud batteries really worth subsidising? EVs are the most expensive CO2 abatement known to man so we are hardly getting bang for our buck.

"In the Stated Policies Scenario, the global EV fleet is projected to emit

230 Mt CO2-eq in 2030, but if that fleet was powered by ICE vehicles

emissions would be 350 Mt CO2eq, delivering 120 Mt CO2-eq of net

savings."

https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ed5f4484-f556-4110-8c5c-4ede8b…

"Ultimately, the reason electric cars are championed is their promised emission reductions. Yet, the IEA estimates that even if the world achieves its ambitious stated electric vehicle targets by 2030, the additional saved CO2 emissions over this decade will be 235 million tons. The standard climate model used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests this will reduce global temperatures by only 0.0001°C by 2100."

https://financialpost.com/opinion/bjorn-lomborg-the-muddled-reality-of-…

by Peter Olorenshaw | 20th May 23, 9:56pm 1684576580

Almost all charging of EVs is at home, not on government subsidised chargers. The EV charging away from home for most people is just on trips or if they get caught out and most of the government subsided ones are in places where the Chargenet business has not been able to install chargers due to grid capacity constraints at that location (eg Springs Junction). Your IEA "Stated Policies" can not be allowed to happen, we know we all have to up our game in emissions reductions and so really we should be looking at the "Sustainable Development Scenario" from your first reference (IEA 202) and of course that is 400MtCO2e net reductions. But of course that is globally, assuming a dirty grid. Here in NZ with already an 85% renewable grid, heaps of already consented wind power ready to go just waiting for demand to pick up, quite a bit more geothermal available, plus the possibility of using geothermal as dry hydro year cover (gradually ramping up production in those years and depleting the fields a little, then ramping them down in normal years and letting the fields recover, plus the bigger diversification with more wind and solar (there is no such thing as a still wind year) then 95% renewable is achievable very fast. And in this sort of grid environment, EVs make even more sense. Plus there is the not insignificant advantage of zero other tailpipe pollutants like particulates and NOx which causes lots of ill health in our urban environments.

Many people buying EVs now already found they are cost effective. With our Leaf we have had it for 6 years and never had do do any maintenance on it other than 4 tyres over the 45,000km we've done in it. The most we have ever paid for a charge up is $12 which gets us between 150 and 200km. But in summer we can charge it up from our own solar system.

And while there is very limited if any recycling of lithium batteries down yet, that is mainly because its not necessary. People with old Nissan Leafs sell them onto people that only need to do 50km a day (actually thats most of us) and the few that have replacement batteries, their old batteries still have value in a second life in stationary applications where power density is not so important.

You might be interested to know that all the Teslas coming out of China now don't have any cobalt in their batteries. But that argument was always a scam put out by fossil fuel companies clutching at straws to keep us in our polluting ways. Are you saying there are no poor labour issues in getting you your fuel or any of the materials that go into your ICE car?

Ultimately I agree with you that EVs are not some silver bullet, but they are a useful part of the transport CO2 emission reduction we must achieve. There things like proximity as a transport solution (live close to where you works school and play or work close to where you live so you don't need to use a car daily) eg allowing people to have more than one dwelling on a site (without development contributions as there is no or minimal new infrastructure required), even if no other planning rules are initially changed, making biking safe pleasant and convenient (most of our trips are less than 5km which are eminently bikable even on a non e-bike, public transport running on dedicated corridors so its faster than car commuting, restoring passenger rail on an electrified rail network and so on are all indespensable parts of the approach to zero CO2e transport emissions.

by profile | 21st May 23, 9:36am 1684618591

"EVs are not some silver bullet, but they are a useful part of the transport CO2 emission reduction we must achieve." You are deluded if you think a 0.0001°C drop in global temperatures is useful. Why not use the EV subsidies to cure world hunger, sanitation and hospital care for the billion of us living in abject poverty? You know, something useful.

"The standard climate model used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests this will reduce global temperatures by only 0.0001°C by 2100."

You love EV's - great - but why do you expect other people to pay for your hobby?

Virtue signalling hobby cars.

"First,as of the time of the survey, 89%

of households with an EV also had a non-electric vehicle in addition to the

EV. Second, 60% of house holds with an EV also had a non-electric SUV,

truck ,or minivan.Third, 66% of households with an EV also had a non-

electric vehicle that was driven more miles per year."

https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP322.pdf