The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is disappointed but sadly not surprised at the revelation that Wellington’s electric vehicle (EV) chargers are only being used 1-3 per cent of the time.
Union spokesperson Jordan Williams says:“This was utterly predictable. Electric vehicles are simply not that popular outside of the social circles that Wellington City Councillors apparently move in. These ‘virtue wagons’ are too expensive and too high maintenance to run for most people.”

“Faced with this abject yet expensive $53,900 failure, the Wellington City Council argues that they are building the charging stations now to meet future demand as the number of electric vehicles inevitably soars. During a pandemic, Council should not be building unpopular and unused infrastructure, based solely on the heroic assumption that at some indeterminate time in the future, EV technology will somehow become popular, and therefore the charging stations will represent value for money.”

“Wellington City Councillor Sean Rush attempted to justify the charging stations saying: 'My expectation is if you build them, it [usage] will come.' This is no basis for spending ratepayers’ money. In any case Cr Rush needs to consider the inspiration for his quote. It is from 1989 sports fantasy film ‘Field of Dreams’. The entire film is about dreams and seeing things that are not there. He should reflect on that.”

“In a COVID-19 world, the Council building electric vehicle chargers in anticipation of an unproven future need should be classified as a non-urgent nice-to-have project. There are already several private companies, including Mevo, out installing chargers with their own money.”

“The Taxpayers’ Union strongly disagrees with Mevo chief executive Erik Zydervelt who said of the chargers: ‘use is not a good measure of how useful they are.’ Actually Erik, when they are being funded by hard-pressed ratepayers, use is the only measure that counts.”
 

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