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Showing posts from 2017

Less Carbon, More Cars?

More or Less? I keep getting people telling me how excited they are about electric cars. The number of passenger vehicles registered in New Zealand has been just over 2.5 million for the past 10 years. There are 600 cars per 1000 people, compared to 400 per 1000 for the USA.  In 2015 the government of NZ spent $3 billion on roading and local govt spent $1 billion. New Zealand drivers consume 152,000 barrels of oil per day and at $70 NZD per barrel, that is about $4 billion on fuel per year.  There are about 100 registrations of electric cars per month which is about 0.4% of the registrations. There is no economic benefit to NZ if we import an electric car or a petrol car - it's the same. If Kiwi's changed to the same car ownership rates as the car mad, car dependent USA - that would reduce the amount of money flying out of the country. to import cars and parts and reduce congestion and fuel spend by 30%.  We wouldn't get to save much on roads, as we would hav