Greig Epps: Imported Vehicles Association CEO on the review of the Clean Car Standard, slashed import emission charges

The struggling car industry is looking forward to some much needed relief.  

The Government's confirmed its slashing charges on importers who don't meet carbon targets by almost 80% and launching a full review.  

It's expected to save about $264 million in cost to consumers and will keep imported cars cheaper.  

Imported Vehicles Association Chief Executive Greig Epps told Andrew Dickens the target was difficult for many businesses to reach.  

He says this isn't going backwards, it is being realistic about encouraging the use of clean cars.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, the government's having another go at the clean
car standard, saying importers just cannot hit the current targets.
It's moving to slash emission charges, cutting the twenty twenty
three Clean Vehicle Standard by nearly eighty percent, and the
change is expected to save around two hundred and sixty
four million dollars in costs of consumers and we'll keep
our imported cars cheaper. So let's talk to Greg Epps,

(00:22):
who is the Imported Vehicle Association CEO. Good morning to you, Greg, morning,
How are you good? Matte? Is this good news for you?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
It is? It's really welcome relief. The industry has been
struggling for least the last year and a half under
these targets. I mean, people might call this backsliding, but
when you've set a target so hard that we can't
even get to it, you know it's not backsliding. It's

(00:50):
being realistic and coming back to what can we actually
do to be bringing cleaner cars into the country.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Government says consumers will save two hundred and sixty four million.
So what is that mean for the prices of used cars?

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Well, what we've been seeing is that there's a certain
segment of cars. Especially it's the family sized vehicles, those
sort of six and seven seaters that have just been
pushed out of the price range of the family, the
normal key we family. You know, they've been suffering from
penalties of nearly three thousand dollars on top of the

(01:26):
price of the vehicle. And when you're looking at things
like a hybrid people Move, which is a really good
car that you want people to get into, you put
another three thousand dollars on top of the price and
it just gets out of reach.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
What I found interesting is exactly that the hybrids, which
have less emissions than your older cars, we're also getting penalized.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, and from next year. And the thing is, it's
the penalties that have been cut, the target is still
going to be harder to reach. Next year, it's still
it's still going to go down. So next year or
almost all all hybrids, whether they're new, used, we're going
to be penalized. So we were going to be pushing

(02:10):
this technology out of reach.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
And evs were they penalized too.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
No evs, if it's a pure EV it would still
have got a credit. But the problem for us is
that in the used sector, Japan hasn't been making evs,
and so there aren't used evs for us to bring
into the country, and so we weren't able to generate credits.
The policy expected you to be able to generate credits

(02:37):
to offset your penalties. But as the as the government
noted yesterday, well over eighty percent of people of importers
bringing cars and we're just being penalized and being penalized
over one thousand dollars a car.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Does this mean that evs are a bus in that
Japan is not making them, however, China is making thousands.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
That's that's that's the thing I mean. I think what
we've pointed out to the government is that there are
really two markets here. There are new cars, and the
new car manufacturers have got a lot of opportunity to
get out there and find these to say, the Chinese vehicles,
and to push the Japanese manufacturers to head towards evs

(03:19):
as well. But in the used car market, we haven't
had that opportunity. And so you know, we bring affordable
vehicles for Kiwi families and the average Kiwi. We can
bring in class that are cleaner than what we've got here,
and that's how we progress and refresh the fleet and
move it forward, and we can, you know, let's get

(03:40):
as many evs as we can, but we've got to
be realistic about about what the average KEI we can afford.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
And what do you say to the people who say, oh, great,
we're going to have cheap cars, but we're also going
to have dirty cars.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Every used import that comes in at the moment is
better in terms of two than the average vehicle in
the sleep. We're talking about replacing twenty year old vehicles
with a ten year old vehicle that is that is cleaner.
So we're not bringing dirtier cars, and we're not bringing
dirty cars, and we're actually trying to shift four million

(04:18):
cars and change the composition of that fleet. So no,
we're working to bring that carbon level down, but it
does take time.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Greg, thank you so much for your time this morning.
Greg is the CEO of the Important Motor Vehicles Association.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
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