Greig Epps: Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association CEO on the watering down of the Clean Car regulations

There’s hopes changes to car import regulation will ease costs. 

The Government's watering down regulations brought in by the previous government, that encouraged importers to bring in less polluting vehicles by charging an emissions standard. 

Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association chief executive Greig Epps told Andrew Dickens while it won't change car prices overnight, it's good news for consumers. 

He says it will stop vehicles becoming more expensive. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So the clean car importer standard is going to be lowered.
It's going to come into line with Australia's a Mission
Standards plan, effectively creating one large car market. I guess
that gives you sort of an advantage. DC two targets
will be softened, meaning we can then bring in slightly
dirty cars. Then before clean car advocates worried that New

(00:20):
Zealand will become a dumping ground for less efficient vehicles
that can't go elsewhere, I've got the chief executive of
the Vehicle Import Association with me, Greg Ebbs.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hello, Greg Morney, Andrew, how's it going good?

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Will this make cars cheaper?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
It will slow them down from getting more expensive. They're
not really going to get cheaper. And to your point
of bringing in dirtier cars, we're still advancing the carbon
targets down, so we will still be bringing in cleaner cars.
We're just bringing them in a little bit slower than
we were going to.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Okay, well that was my next question. Will it make
it dirty? But you don't believe so.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
No, I mean we have been progressing both ourselves. So
I represent the used vehicle import side of things, and
then there's also the new car side, and we've both
been working towards these lower targets and trying to achieve
bring in cleaner cars. So this has been happening. It's

(01:19):
just that as you make these targets harder and harder,
the scope of the types of vehicles that we can
bring in, the range, the quality in terms of condition,
that starts to get a bit harder if we're going
to keep them affordable. And so what this has done
is it's meant that we will be able to still

(01:41):
keep bringing in a good range of vehicles at a
good quality at a price that's affordable for Kiwis.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Does it mean we will end out importing more ice vehicles,
more gas vehicles for longer rather than making some switch
to hybrids or electric Well, I think in.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
The used car space, used import space, we're going to
see more hybrids coming through because hybrids are the vehicles
that are dominant in Japan. At the moment. We get
ninety five percent of our used vehicle imports coming from Japan.
So as Japan goes, so do we in the used sector.
The new car guys, they're all working on their product lines.

(02:18):
They're bringing out evs and hybrids over the next five
years or so. I don't think there's anything that New
Zealand could be doing that will speed up the manufacturer
of evs anywhere else in the world. We take what
is available and these settings are just helping us make

(02:40):
sure that we can make a sustainable transition through to
those evs.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
And how we seeing demands for used cars really at
the moment? And I say this as a man who
owns a twenty nineteen Many that I'm trying to sell
that nobody wants to buy this thing. If you want
to buy my twenty nineteen Many, feel free to contact
me here at news Storks. But is there a demand
for these used cars at the moment or are we
in a hole? Like a lot of the rest of
the economy.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Things have slowed down. Things have certainly slowed down. You know,
the new car sector has been seeing numbers drop our
used vehicles, the numbers have dropped from last year. I
think that's a product of just the very tight economy
at the moment. Your previous guests talking about the monetary

(03:25):
policy statements and the interest rates. Look, we're just all
trying to survive through until the end of this year.
I think when we're expecting interest rates to loosen up
a bit. And as they loosen up, it means that
people may feel a little bit more comfortable with going
out and getting that replacement vehicle rather than holding on

(03:46):
to the one they've got at the moment.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
And you'll have more for them because of these rules.
And I thank you so much for your time and
your expertise, Greg Epps, who is the chief executive of
the Important Motive Vehicle Industry Association. For more from The
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