Transport Minister Simon Bridges’ announcement of moves to encourage electric vehicle ownership is being hailed as a great step forward towards converting the New Zealand fleet to electric-only power.

However, in reality it’s only a baby step, and in its current form is unlikely to attract any fleets to totally switch over, although many will make token contributions.

The reason? The minor concessions offered are just too little to make it financially feasible, so that the only driver is going to be emotion. And emotion costs money.

Here are the hard facts.

• Currently only BMW and Renault offer pure plug-in EVs in New Zealand, although a few Nissan Leafs are finding their way here as used imports.
• All the new vehicles are horrendously expensive to purchase, with the BMW i3 more than $78,000 – for a Corolla-sized car – and Renault asking almost the same price for its little three-door Zoe, which is smaller than the award-winning five-door Mazda2
• Bridges cites a number of financial benefits, including no road user charges and some yet-to-be-announced tax depreciation offsets. He currently quotes an amount of $600 a year.
• Fuel costs will also be cut to the equivalent of 30c a km, he says, by plugging in to the grid.

So we crunched the numbers, for the Mazda2 GLX automatic using the Government’s own EECA Business website, 36 months/63,780km; for the Zoe, using the same parameters.

1. Mazda2 GLX: Total cost of ownership 30c/km.
2. Renault Zoe: Total cost of ownership 78c/km.

Now, I don’t know how much you value driving a very small three-door car that’s quiet and helps the environment, versus an equally comfortable, bigger five-door car, that’s also fairly quiet, very fuel efficient (and so also to a lesser degree, helps the environment). Plus the benefit of being able to drive in bus lanes in the EV.

Is it really worth paying more than two and half times extra per km? It certainly doesn’t make business sense!