NZ vehicle market undergoing structural changes, Toyota says

Toyota believes the New Zealand vehicle market is seeing some structural changes, with electric and hybrid vehicle adoption on the rise.

It comes as data shows a surge in electric and hybrid new vehicle registrations.

Economics consultancy Infometrics said there were 19,424 hybrid vehicle registrations in the June quarter, up 11 percent from a year ago, while electric vehicle registrations more than doubled to 6099.

New petrol vehicle registrations fell 13 percent to 16,213 and diesel fell 4 percent to 1842, meaning hybrid registrations alone outnumbered petrol and diesel.

Toyota NZ chief strategy officer Andrew Davis said the rise in hybrid registrations has been coming for some time.

"We made a strategic decision quite some time ago to make sure we could offer a really broad range of powertrains to Kiwis," he said.

Asked whether the New Zealand vehicle market was changing, he agreed.

"Yeah, I think we'll see that," Davis said.

He continued: "I think we'll see that and the more electrified product you get in [the] market the more we'll see adoption lift."

Davis noted how Toyota was an early adopter of hybrid vehicles with its Prius model, and pointed to how hybrids had since become mainstream across the market.

Toyota said its own sales data for the six months ending June (including Lexus) showed hybrids made up 70.4 percent of its sales, followed by diesel at 21.1 percent, plug-in hybrid at 6.5 percent and full battery electric at 1.6 percent.

Traditional petrol was at 0.4 percent.

For just the June month, Toyota said hybrids made up 54.5 percent of sales, diesel was at 21.6 percent, while plug-in hybrids saw a big jump to 20.6 percent and full battery electric was at 2.9 percent.

Davis said Toyota was beginning to offer commercial customers more options, such as a mild hybrid and electric Hilux utes and alternative powertrains for large SUVs.

"Which is actually making some rural consumers or people that may not have considered full electric products consider them."