Latest / Best of Business / Greig Epps: Imported Motor Vehicle Industry CEO on the drop in EV sales in New Zealand

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Greig Epps: Imported Motor Vehicle Industry CEO on the drop in EV sales in New Zealand · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks be follow
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  Speaker 1: this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
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  Speaker 2: Right new stats on our EV market the show. They
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  Speaker 2: can barely give them away these days. News figures suggest
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  Speaker 2: this year just one and eleven cars are electric. That
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  Speaker 2: includes hybrids. By the way, which I'll get to this
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  Speaker 2: is left imported stuck with a lot of stock they
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  Speaker 2: can't move. The important motor vehicle industry boss Greg EPs
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  Speaker 2: as well. There's Greg morting.
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  Speaker 3: To you, I think, Mike, how's it going very well?
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  Speaker 2: Indeed, the car market generally versus the EV market specifically,
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  Speaker 2: can we differentiate the two out or not? Really?
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  Speaker 3: This year? No, not really, Mike, it's been it's been
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  Speaker 3: pretty hard across the board. You know. Imports have been
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  Speaker 3: down this year, they're down from last year, and a
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  Speaker 3: lot of a lot of the guys in the industry
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  Speaker 3: are really just hanging on.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, the lack of difference. This is my bug bear
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  Speaker 2: because I'm a car guy. So when I see reportage
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  Speaker 2: of the so called electric vehicles, electric to me's a BEV.
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  Speaker 2: Everything else is a hybrid, and they've got to be
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  Speaker 2: delineated out, don't they. Because a hybrid is a completely
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  Speaker 2: different experience from a beer, isn't it.
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  Speaker 3: It is? So what the government's done is they've they've
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  Speaker 3: said anything that plugs in. So you have your beds,
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  Speaker 3: as you say, your battery electrics, and then you've got
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  Speaker 3: your plug in hybrids, see the ones that have both
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  Speaker 3: the petrol engine and a battery. And then you have
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  Speaker 3: your petrol hybrid, which is the most self contained system
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  Speaker 3: that is just you put petrol of it, but it
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  Speaker 3: has the regender battery.
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  Speaker 2: Is the plug or the architecture required to plug something in?
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  Speaker 2: Is that the hindrance or not.
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  Speaker 3: It's a bunch of things I think that really have
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  Speaker 3: put us in a in a bad spot here. One
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  Speaker 3: it's been the economy, it is the infrastructure. It is
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  Speaker 3: the cost of putting in. For example, you can do
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  Speaker 3: the trickle recharge and just plug into your normal wall socket,
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  Speaker 3: but that's that's not really the best way to do it.
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  Speaker 3: So people are really encouraged to put in the charge
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  Speaker 3: I ports those sorts of things. And then there's just
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  Speaker 3: the charging across the country, where while that's been built
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  Speaker 3: out pretty well over the last few years, where we
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  Speaker 3: nowhere near that sort of coverage of charging to make
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  Speaker 3: people feel comfortable about using evs all the time.
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  Speaker 2: And then we've got the international issue with any number
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  Speaker 2: of manufacturers now saying wops, we got ahead of ourselves.
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  Speaker 2: That sends a message. But I'm sitting there thinking maybe
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  Speaker 2: maybe not, and I suddenly see four REVOLVERO whatever, going yeah, no,
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  Speaker 2: it's not quite what we thought it was. I'm going
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  Speaker 2: to go, oh, well, I won't worry then, aren't I.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, you see, everyone's actually heading to hybrids now. About
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  Speaker 3: forty three forty five percent of the used imports that
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  Speaker 3: we're bringing in this year have been hybrids. Hybrids a
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  Speaker 3: really solid technology that've been around. They reduce carbon output
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  Speaker 3: by about half of your normal vehicle. And I think,
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  Speaker 3: just weren't there. You know, we went into EV's there.
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  Speaker 3: They're a great solution for the future, but the world
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  Speaker 3: wasn't ready to supply US evs at a cost that
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  Speaker 3: New Zealand could afford.
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  Speaker 2: Couldn't agree more well done, Greg, appreciate it very much,
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  Speaker 2: Greg epps the FI at five hundred e they paused
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  Speaker 2: production of that in Europe. That's the latest announcement from
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  Speaker 2: FIAT over the weekend. Stillantus owned Fiat. They can't sell them,
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  Speaker 2: so they've stopped making them for now, and when they
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  Speaker 2: can sell them, they'll presumably restart making them.
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