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 have the same roads, but we might have fewer crashes with fewer cars. And with fewer cars there would be better conditions for cyclists and buses. So - I am working on figuring out why we have so many cars in NZ compared to other countries, and what can be done to reduce the number of cars. This would keep a huge amount of money in the country (close to $300 million on vehicles and $1 billion on fuel) and reduce congestion. The evidence is pretty compelling that MORE of anything is the answer to what ever problem you want to think about at this time. Whether it is buildings or appliances or plastic bottles or cars... the answer is LESS. The transition innovations and engineering projects are about achieving less consumption and more benefit and more real value for people.

What would it take to get you as excited about a reducing car ownership and reducing vehicle kilometres driven rate in New Zealand as you are getting about Tesla taking orders for electric battery cars?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-power-autos-analysis/britain-faces-huge-costs-to-avoid-power-shortages-with-electric-car-plan-idUSKCN1BC3VU

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