Who's winning Aotearoa's EV battle? ⚡

It wasn’t just us Kiwis enjoying a well deserved break over Matariki. Elon Musk decided to take a break too… from Twitter. It didn’t stop him from making waves though. 🌊 He not only hit 100m followers on Twitter, but also managed to drop the dreaded ‘b’ word in a conversation with a Tesla owners: bankruptcy. Why would you do that? Because Tesla (TSLA) has been burning through billions of dollars investing in new factories in Germany, China and the US, and at the same time battling Covid lockdowns and supply chain issues. 😷 Still, Tesla wheeled out almost 255,000 cars in the second quarter of the year. This is up from around 201,000 cars in the same time last year, but down on the 310,000 delivered in the first quarter of 2022.

But is Tesla winning the electric vehicles (EV) battle where it really counts: Down Under? ⚡ There are more EVs rolling on Aotearoa roads than ever before. And due to record petrol prices and a sweet as sweetener from the government, first time registrations of EVs have more than doubled so far this year. Meaning there’s a good chance you’ll spot them daily, surging over the Harbour Bridge or charging through Transmission Gully. 

One big surprise though is the car maker that’s leading the way. A spin through the Waka Kotahi vehicle registrations database shows that with around 2,300 EV registrations, Kiwis have been piling into Nissan Leafs more than any other EV so far this year. Unbe-leaf-able! 🌿 That compares to 1,300 Teslas, which is up over 80% than the same period in 2021. Another surprising entry in the top five to cross the finish line is Swedish-based Polestar (PSNY), rolling in more than 400 of their Polestar 2s onto our shores this year. Who else is zooming ahead in EV supremacy? Chart up here. 🚗