Last year’s sour market massively affected some big players, but they’re weathering the storm, the Motor Industry Association says.

WILL established electric vehicle distributors involvers likely to have seen millions of dollars’ potential sales disappear when the market went sour last year be rethinking being in New Zealand?

Not one, says an industry watchdog.

EV uptake last year was one third the 2023 count and just under half 2022’s accrual, so as result EVs comprised 7.7 percent of new vehicle sales, down from 19.8 percent in 2023 and 13.8 percent in 2022.

All brands wholly or heavily focussed on the technology felt pain, but three big past frontrunners during the immediately preceding period of profitable uptake - Tesla, BYD and MG - were really smashed.

In respectively dropping from 4909 to 1287 and 3712 to 969 registrations (of which 686 were fully electric), Tesla and BYD dropped 73.8 and 73.9 percent. MG, meantime, saw its sales effectively half, 6103 to 3067, a 49.7 percent decline.

Another important involver taking a hit was Hyundai, which went from 7592 sales to 4078, a 46.3 percent fall, which must have stung when conjoined Kia contained to a 13.7 percent decline, with higher volumes: 10,065 down to 8683.

Polestar dropped 57.7 percent (544 units to 230) and Opel fell 77.6 percent (361 to just 88 units).

How might they are others be feeling now?

“Well, it would've hurt,” responds Aimee Wiley, chief executive of the Motor Industry Association.

“No one can survive significantly reduced volumes without feeling pain.”

Yet the voice for the representative body for almost all new vehicle distributors (save Tesla) doubts any will be considering pulling up stumps.

The end game is still the end game; electric remains the future, regardless how rough the present is.

“The future's still electric, right? And I think the majority of people who understand change management know that all change is a human change, and there's a process and a timeline a lot along with it.

As much as transition to a clean vehicle fleet is still inevitable, the industry has had to rejig its pace of change forecast.

She foresees the market swinging back slightly this year, a bit more in 2026. But potential to again replicate the returns in the 2020-2023 period probably won’t be likely until 2027.

That’s a different forecast than the industry delivered last year, when they imagined consumer rebound from the Clean Car Discount rebate scheme might begin in mid-2024.

“Removal of the Clean Car Discount left many thinking we’d have a quiet quarter one and quarter two for EVs. We expected the market to normalise out come the middle of the year and we just didn’t see that happen.”

Instead, there was substantial consumer shift back toward higher emission products. In addition, a tougher economy, atop those policy decisions to scrap subsidies, add on Road User Charges and elevate ACC levies for electric cars left consumers wary.

As result, expectation now is for a 36-month recovery in respect to electrics.

“We’ve probably still got two years to go to get back to where we wanted to be,” Wiley said.

But it will happen, she is sure. “We are just waiting for it to normalise. We think that the transition to EV is still going to occur.”

The industry isn’t in complete hibernation. More new makes and fresh products are coming, plus those makes that had to firesafe excess stock last year - often at huge loss - have largely finalised those actions.

Once bitten, twice shy. Consignments from now on will be smaller, trends more closely monitored and prices will go back toward the previous regular retails, she suggests.

One brand already into this rejig is Mazda NZ, which withdrew a plug-in hybrid CX-60 that would have achieved a Clean Car rebate, replacing it with a six-cylinder petrol edition that, while labelled a hybrid is not as thrifty nor as environmentally beneficial. It has straight away proven more popular.

Regardless of the tough market condition, several additional electric car makes from China, with diverse model choices, seem highly likely to introduce this year.

Says Wiley: “EV models are still coming. It's just that I think people bringing them to the country will bring them in more cautious volumes and wait for demand to pick up.

“They're still going to supply. It's just whether or not we have as many models supplied.”

Several factors stand to re-engage EV interest. Clean Car Standard is often overlooked by consumers because it is a legislation aimed at distributors, but the fleet average for CO2 output tightened on January 1 and any penalties incurred vehicles at point of arrival will ultimately affect recommended retail prices, Wiley says.

Potential is, too, that Road User Charges will come to petrol product this year. Again, more consumer cost. She is confident EV technology will benefit if clean vehicle prices come to parity with ‘dirty’ cars. And who is to say fuel prices might not climb?

In 2023, Tesla, BYD and MG all benefitted from winning over private and business buyer.

This year? “They'll be adapting and they'll be trying to grow their market share and their volume share as much as possible. I’m sure they will have pivoted to adapt and they'll be targeting more Government fleet and corporate buyers (because they have set CO2 reduction goals).

“I would be surprised if they're not actually trying to get more EVs in the fleets and pushing them in large numbers, which would also probably align with the corporate net zero goals.

“That’s where I think you’ll see demand pick up. The first thing we're going to see with economic changes is business demand to recover first and then consumer demand to recover second.

“I think (for EV sellers) it’s about just trying to do everything you can to be competitive and shift as many units as you can with your product.”

The MIA has always contended higher acceptance of full electric and electrified (hybrid) product is crucial to meeting and reducing CO2 targets. It holds a pick up in sales pace is vital to keep that ideal alive.

December saw some revival, but though it was the best month of 2024 for registrations of battery-involved cars, EVs and PHEVs still made up just 15 percent of sales and just 10,632 new EVs were sold in New Zealand in 2024. That’s well below the 31,400 sold the year prior or 2022’s 24,400 registrations and comes in just above the 2021 total of 10,007.

The National-led coalition Government contended a decline in EV sales was expected after the axing of the subsidies at the end of 2023 and suggested that was offset by an earlier rush to buy clean vehicles after the election.

Last week, however, the news and current affairs website Newsroom said its analysis was that the extent of last year’s EV sales collapse outweighed the post-election sales spike.

It also holds that “New Zealand is now 16,500 clean cars short of where it would have been had EV purchasing continued at pre-election levels” and further contends steep discounts to clear excess stocks “have largely failed to bring Kiwis back to the sales counter.”

Wiley says extent to which some involvers discounted has been extraordinary and agrees buyers were sometimes nonetheless slow to react. “Some of that deep discounting happened for months before it stimulated EV demand.”

That’s a reflection on the economy rather than an inability for consumers to see a great deal. Either way, that period is could well all but over.

“My personal opinion is that the industry has cleared the overstock. And so what we're going to see now is a lot more normalised pricing of new EVs … as time progresses throughout the year, I'm hoping it becomes really a lot more stable, a lot more are controlled by market dynamics versus policy dynamics, and we'll start to see an improvement in the economy. Even if it's a gradual and slow improvement, I'd rather see that than stagnation.

“I think over time, too, consumers will naturally just start thinking about EVs because of the technology … It’ll become less about the mode of power and more about what suits the lifestyle, the need and the technological expectations.”