Deadline on future of Clean Vehicle Standard looks set to quietly come and go
Monday, 29 June 2026
The Government appears set to miss this week’s deadline for deciding whether to scrap the Clean Vehicle Standard, after submissions revealed little support for such a change.
The coalition Government has twice weakened the standard, which was implemented by the former government to shift the playing field towards imports of lower emission new and second-hand vehicles.
In 2024, it relaxed the emissions targets and in November it slashed by 80% the penalties importers must pay if they fail to bring average emissions below the new targets of 108 grams of carbon per kilometre travelled this year and 103g/km in 2027.
Transport Minister Chris Bishop instructed the Transport Ministry in January to carry out closed consultations, with one goal being to help Cabinet decide by Tuesday this week whether to “retain or abolish” the standard.
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However, EV advocates believe changes in public sentiment stemming from the Middle East fuel crisis have made abolition unlikely.
Drive Electric chairperson Kirsten Corson said the best option would be to align New Zealand’s standard with Australia, where the penalties for failing to meet targets for new cars are four times higher than here.
“They are a far bigger market than we are and they are making it work.”
Thom Drew, Tesla’s country director for Australia and New Zealand, told the ministry in January that — as it stood — the Clean Vehicle Standard (CVS) was “about as weak as a fuel efficiency policy regime can be” and the country would become a true outlier if it was abolished.
Toyota New Zealand told the ministry only a few countries such as Russia, Indonesia and Turkey did not have an equivalent policy to bring down vehicles’ carbon emissions.
The ministry summarised submissions for Bishop in February and was due to submit its advice to him in April.
Bishop did not confirm a decision on whether to scrap the standard had been delayed, late last week, but gave no indication that was imminent.
Policy work was still underway and the Government would have more to say in due course, he said in a brief statement.
Sales of conventional petrol and diesel cars are on the decline globally, after peaking in 2017.
Bishop did not respond to speculation — not evident in any of the public submissions — that some struggling car brands had threatened to exit the New Zealand market if environmental rules were not further relaxed.
Aside from scrapping the standard, another of the options the Transport Ministry consulted on was having different rules for new and second-hand imports.
Greig Epps, chief executive of the Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association (VIA), suggested used cars should be subject to different rules.
“Policies that materially reduce affordability or volume of used imports risk slowing the replacement of older vehicles, which can outweigh gains made by marginal improvements in the average efficiency of incoming vehicles,” the association argued.
Toyota agreed in its submission that the standard needed to strike a balance between ambition on the one hand, and “achievability” and affordability on the other.
But it made it clear it thought the Government had gone too far in cutting the penalties that applied under the existing regime in November.
It argued excluding used vehicles from the standard would result in more imports of used cars, at the expense of new vehicles, resulting in higher overall emissions.
Bishop has previously suggested New Zealand is a very much a market-taker in relation to imported vehicles, but Toyota said “New Zealand distributors make product import decisions on their own merits” — indicating local policies did impact what types of vehicles were made available here.
“Toyota New Zealand does not make specific reference to Australia’s policy settings in determining its future model mix,” it said when emphasising that point.
Drew said in Tesla’s submission to the Transport Ministry that the “rapid and poorly-consulted dismantling of much of the Clean Car framework” had seen New Zealand become a laggard in the EV transition.
The Post previously revealed that the Transport Ministry’s advice on lowering CVS penalties only “partially met” quality assurance criteria for the purpose of informing Cabinet decisions, because of a lack of consultation.
The ministry only consulted vested interests ‒ including the VIA and the Motor Industry Association ‒ on that move, due to “time constraints”.
Drew appeared to also question the approach to the latest consultations, suggesting that appeared designed to favour a predetermined outcome despite the ministry this time canvassing a wider range of stakeholders.
“The framing of the ministry’s questions and the Government’s public statements seem to be driving towards a conclusion that, because EV imports have dropped, the Clean Vehicle Standard is ineffective and ought to be removed,” he said.
But the drop reflected the Government’s abolition of the separate Clean Car Discount that cross-subsided the purchase of lower emission vehicles, its imposition of Road User Charges on EVs and it “severely undermining” the CVS by weakening penalties to the point where they no longer influenced the behaviour of importers, he said.
“The solution is not to kick out the remaining leg entirely.”
Should that happen, the EV market might shrink further and “the Government may be seen as so hostile to EVs that the country will be de-prioritised for introduction of new models and makes, leaving more polluting vehicles in the market while other countries move forward”, he said.
Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton has also voiced the latter concern.
“The CVS should remain in place. Otherwise, New Zealand will become an increasingly attractive dumping ground for fuel-inefficient used vehicles,” he said.
“Given New Zealand’s relative poverty and the fact that we drive cars almost to the grave, there is a long emissions shadow that comes with such vehicles.”