{"id":368256,"date":"2026-04-07T18:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T18:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/368256\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T18:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T18:41:08","slug":"kiwis-switch-to-evs-solar-as-fuel-prices-stay-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/368256\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiwis switch to EVs, solar as fuel prices stay high"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Zealand has reached a “tipping point” with more people switching to electric cars and solar as Meridian Energy’s weekly app registrations increase by 214%, it says.<\/p>\n

By Charlotte Cook of RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n

Rising oil prices have put pressure on prices across New Zealand, pushing an upward trend and interest in EV alternative vehicles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Waka Kotahi data shows monthly registrations of full battery EVs last month jumped nearly four-fold from recent levels, from an average of 800 a month in the last two years, to 3100.<\/p>\n

Registrations of plug-in hybrid vehicles almost tripled.<\/p>\n

Meridian’s head of energy, Richard Sanford, said there has been a significant jump over the past four weeks.<\/p>\n

“The last month has definitely seen a boost in interest towards EVs and home solar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“It does feel like a tipping point, as more and more Kiwis see how moving away from a reliance on fossil fuels – where they can – would make financial sense.”<\/p>\n

Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey speaks to Q+A’s Jack Tame. (Source: Q and A)<\/p>\n

He said Meridian had long believed in what EV’s could offer to the country and was encouraged by the new interest.<\/p>\n

Certain areas were seeing more interest than others.<\/p>\n

“Across our Zero network we’ve seen a 16% increase in users and 20% increase in sessions over the last month, with the three most popular charging stations on the Zero network being Auckland Airport, Twizel and Culverden.<\/p>\n

“That continues a trend towards more EV uptake, with our weekly app registrations increasing by 214% and weekly active users by 80% over the last six months.”<\/p>\n

Sandford said Meridian was continuing to invest in EV public charging sites.<\/p>\n

There are currently just over 1800 public charge points in New Zealand with more on the way according to the Government.<\/p>\n

In March, Transport Minister Chris Bishop and Energy and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced<\/a> the number of electric vehicle (EV) public chargers around New Zealand would more than double thanks to $52.7 million in zero-interest loans from the government and co-investment from ChargeNet and Meridian.<\/p>\n

He said New Zealand had one of the lowest charger-to-EV ratios in the OECD.<\/p>\n

With the new investment the national total would be around 4550.<\/p>\n

“The Government is working towards 10,000 charge points by 2030, roughly one for every 40 EVs,” Bishop said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand has reached a “tipping point” with more people switching to electric cars and solar as Meridian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[138,2917,111,43,139,69,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-368256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cost-of-living","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-transport"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}