EV Data: Sources and Definitions

Definitions

• EV – Anything with a plug (BEV and PHEV).
• BEV – Battery Electric Vehicle (full electric, no combustion engine).
• PHEV – Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicle (small battery that can be charged externally, as well as combustion engine).
• Hybrid – Plugless (the MVR databases have various classifications for this).
• Light vehicle – A vehicle under 3,500 kg and a type of PASSENGER CAR/VAN or GOODS VAN/TRUCK/UTILITY. Includes cars (sedans, SUVs, hatchbacks etc), small vans (like a Toyota Hiace), Utes (Ford Ranger etc).
• New vs Used Imports – All vehicles registered in NZ are imported built up. Some have been pre-owned (typically in Japan or the UK).

Data Sources

There are a confusing number of sources buried around the place.

Waka Kotahi Open Data (main link)

• Fleet: CSV downloads of each model year.
• Registrations: Dashboard of monthly data from 2020 onwards.
• Fleet: Motor Vehicle Register and API
• Monthly Spreadsheets – Additions to the fleet.
• Monthly Spreadsheets – Fleet Status

Ministry of Transport

• Monthly EV statistics – a series of graph data focusing on light vehicles (fleet and registrations)
• Weekly EV report

I take this data in various forms and combine to produce some of the graphs and tables. Some of the data is not great (e.g. all BMW i3, IX3, IX etc. are all registered as a BMW I), so there’s a bit of work to make things understandable.

Fleet vs Registrations

There is an important difference:

• Registrations are new (or used import) vehicles coming into register.
  This gives an understanding on the increase of EVs down to make and model detail.
• The NZ fleet is much more difficult to measure. Once in the register, the vehicle may have a status of licensed, unlicensed, or on an exemption.

While EV registrations continue to increase, they remain a small portion of the fleet.