Neither Chris will even study a capped EV leasing scheme

A week out from the election, EV advocates are running ads asking “either Chris” to back an EV leasing scheme. Neither Christopher Luxon nor Chris Hipkins has signed up. National points to its public charger target and heavy vehicle funding. Labour points to clean car standards and charging expansion. Neither addresses the proposal itself.

That matters less as a climate story than as a balance sheet one. Fleet turnover, fringe benefit tax and charging costs are where transport decarbonisation actually hits business, and right now nobody can tell a fleet manager what the rules will look like in 2027.

The ask is smaller than the ads suggest

Rewiring Aotearoa and Drive Electric want employees to lease a new or used EV over three to five years from pre-tax pay, similar to Australia’s novated leasing. Rewiring Aotearoa chief executive Mike Casey puts the taxpayer cost at around $5000 per car, with workers saving an average of $36 a week against a standard car loan.

But the formal ask is far more modest. The groups want whichever party governs to assess a pre-tax leasing pathway within its first 100 days, testing the full fiscal cost, a hard fiscal cap, PAYE, FBT and GST treatment, eligibility for used EVs, price caps, consumer protections and portability when staff change jobs. A Deloitte tax paper has already gone to every parliamentary party.

That is not a blank cheque. It is a request to do homework the advocates have largely started.

Australia shows why caution is warranted

The sceptics have a point, and the campaign’s own material makes it for them. Australia’s FBT exemption for novated EV leases has been used by more than 100,000 people and lifted battery and plug-in hybrid share of new sales from 1.8% to 22.9% in three years. It is also now expected to cost A$1.35 billion in 2025-26 against an original forecast of A$90 million, a 15-fold blowout.

Any fiscally conservative government should flinch at that. The advocates clearly know it, which is why their proposal leads with a cap. The sensible response is to test whether a cap can hold, not to refuse to look.

A country that keeps changing its mind

New Zealand’s EV policy has been whiplash rather than strategy. The Clean Car Discount subsidised purchases, drifted towards wealthier buyers, earned the “ute tax” label and was scrapped without replacement, while road user charges landed on EVs. Casey says that at New York Climate Week, New Zealand was known for “having good electric vehicle adoption, and then having it fall off a cliff”.

The numbers back him. New EV sales fell from around 20% of the market in 2023 to under 10% in 2024, and EVs remain just 3.3% of the light fleet, roughly 138,600 of 4.3 million vehicles, consistent with the Ministry of Transport’s fleet statistics.

Leasing is not even new ground. In 2023, a social EV leasing trial designed by the Ministry of Transport and Waka Kotahi for low-income households was shelved before it was piloted, a casualty of reprioritisation.

The quiet tax tweak that already works

The most effective EV policy of this term was never a campaign pledge. From April 2026, FBT on EVs dropped to 17% from a flat 20%, while petrol and diesel vehicles rose to 22.8%. On a $60,000 vehicle, that is $1800 a year less FBT for an EV and $1680 more for a petrol or diesel equivalent. Drive Electric’s Kirsten Corson called it “an important and significant demand-side policy”, noting businesses buy 60-70% of new cars and turn fleets over every three to five years, feeding the secondhand market most households shop in.

That is the lesson. Good fleet policy in New Zealand arrives through technical tax settings, not election rhetoric. A pre-tax leasing assessment belongs in the same category, and pretending otherwise is avoidance dressed as prudence.

Finance is not the only bottleneck

Leasing would not fix everything. The Arval Fleet and Mobility Barometer 2026 finds 50% of NZ companies still buy vehicles outright, with operational leasing at 18% against a 27% Asia-Pacific average. Charging infrastructure is the top barrier to further EV adoption at 49%, and only 18% of firms have a home charging policy.

So National’s charger focus is not wrong. It is just incomplete. Finance structure, running costs and charging access all shape the same fleet decision.

What fleet buyers should expect next

Whoever wins on 7 November inherits three moving levers: FBT settings that now favour EVs, road user charges that cut the other way, and a leasing option nobody will own. A business planning a three-to-five-year fleet renewal cannot price any of that with confidence.

Both parties are right to fear Australia’s cost curve. They are wrong to treat a capped, 100-day review as the same thing. The cheapest policy commitment available this election is a promise to do the maths, and neither Chris has been willing to make it.

Sources

• RNZ: ‘Either’ Chris, Hipkins or Luxon, begged to boost electric vehicle uptake (2026-10-26)
• Rewiring Aotearoa: Fuel costs renew call for EV Salary Boost assessment after election (2026-09-29)
• Drive Electric: Joint media release on EV Salary Boost assessment (2026-09)
• Ministry of Transport: Quarterly fleet statistics (2026-03)
• NZTA: Insights report, enabling affordable transport through sustainable vehicle leasing (2023-08)
• RNZ: Tiny tax change could drive major electric vehicle uptake (2026-05-31)
• Custom Fleet: Arval Fleet and Mobility Barometer 2026, New Zealand (2026)