Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Greig Epps: Imported Vehicles Association CEO on the review of the Clean Car Standard, slashed import emission charges

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Greig Epps: Imported Vehicles Association CEO on the review of the Clean Car Standard, slashed import emission charges · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: All right, the government's having another go at the clean
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: car standard, saying importers just cannot hit the current targets.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: It's moving to slash emission charges, cutting the twenty twenty
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: three Clean Vehicle Standard by nearly eighty percent, and the
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: change is expected to save around two hundred and sixty
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: four million dollars in costs of consumers and we'll keep
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: our imported cars cheaper. So let's talk to Greg Epps,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: who is the Imported Vehicle Association CEO. Good morning to you, Greg, morning,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: How are you good? Matte? Is this good news for you?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: It is? It's really welcome relief. The industry has been
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: struggling for least the last year and a half under
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: these targets. I mean, people might call this backsliding, but
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: when you've set a target so hard that we can't
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: even get to it, you know it's not backsliding. It's
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: being realistic and coming back to what can we actually
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: do to be bringing cleaner cars into the country.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Government says consumers will save two hundred and sixty four million.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: So what is that mean for the prices of used cars?
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Well, what we've been seeing is that there's a certain
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: segment of cars. Especially it's the family sized vehicles, those
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: sort of six and seven seaters that have just been
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: pushed out of the price range of the family, the
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: normal key we family. You know, they've been suffering from
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: penalties of nearly three thousand dollars on top of the
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: price of the vehicle. And when you're looking at things
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: like a hybrid people Move, which is a really good
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: car that you want people to get into, you put
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: another three thousand dollars on top of the price and
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: it just gets out of reach.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: What I found interesting is exactly that the hybrids, which
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: have less emissions than your older cars, we're also getting penalized.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and from next year. And the thing is, it's
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: the penalties that have been cut, the target is still
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: going to be harder to reach. Next year, it's still
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: it's still going to go down. So next year or
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: almost all all hybrids, whether they're new, used, we're going
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: to be penalized. So we were going to be pushing
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: this technology out of reach.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: And evs were they penalized too.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: No evs, if it's a pure EV it would still
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: have got a credit. But the problem for us is
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: that in the used sector, Japan hasn't been making evs,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: and so there aren't used evs for us to bring
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: into the country, and so we weren't able to generate credits.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: The policy expected you to be able to generate credits
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: to offset your penalties. But as the as the government
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: noted yesterday, well over eighty percent of people of importers
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: bringing cars and we're just being penalized and being penalized
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: over one thousand dollars a car.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Does this mean that evs are a bus in that
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Japan is not making them, however, China is making thousands.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: That's that's that's the thing I mean. I think what
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: we've pointed out to the government is that there are
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: really two markets here. There are new cars, and the
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: new car manufacturers have got a lot of opportunity to
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: get out there and find these to say, the Chinese vehicles,
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: and to push the Japanese manufacturers to head towards evs
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: as well. But in the used car market, we haven't
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: had that opportunity. And so you know, we bring affordable
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: vehicles for Kiwi families and the average Kiwi. We can
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: bring in class that are cleaner than what we've got here,
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: and that's how we progress and refresh the fleet and
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: move it forward, and we can, you know, let's get
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: as many evs as we can, but we've got to
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: be realistic about about what the average KEI we can afford.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: And what do you say to the people who say, oh, great,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: we're going to have cheap cars, but we're also going
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: to have dirty cars.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Every used import that comes in at the moment is
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: better in terms of two than the average vehicle in
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: the sleep. We're talking about replacing twenty year old vehicles
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: with a ten year old vehicle that is that is cleaner.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: So we're not bringing dirtier cars, and we're not bringing
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: dirty cars, and we're actually trying to shift four million
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: cars and change the composition of that fleet. So no,
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: we're working to bring that carbon level down, but it
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: does take time.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Greg, thank you so much for your time this morning.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Greg is the CEO of the Important Motor Vehicles Association.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: to news Talks it Be from five am weekdays, or
• 4:40
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