Good News for Euro 6
New Zealand to import only Euro 6d vehicles from 2028
Last year I made a post about where we were sitting with the Euro vehicle emissions standards in New Zealand.
The TLDR is: We sit on the old, flawed Euro 5 standard and it costs the country a lot in additional hospital visits from living with higher pollution. The standard is very easy for vehicle manufacturers to comply with under lab conditions, but then in the real world these vehicles have some pollution levels the same as a car made in the 2000’s. This is especially true for diesels.
To my surprise yesterday I found that Nationals James Meager signed a Land Transport Rule amendment in April this year.
Late last year Waka Kotahi consulted on updating these regulations, but the actual rule change appears to have been completely unreported and I can't find any announcement.
The new rules are a staged approach for new and used vehicles, and new or existing vehicle models. Culminating on July 1st 2028, when every imported light passenger vehicle will have to comply with Euro-6d, or equivalent US, Chinese, or Japanese standards.
When Euro 6d comes to all imported vehicles in 2028, New Zealand will be the last developed nation in the world to implement. This isn’t entirely without logic, New Zealand is a small market so the advice from officials has always been that we should wait and harmonize our rules with Australia's or risk manufactures simply pulling out. This minimises compliance costs. It is a shame Australia has also been such a laggard.
In other news, in November this year the standards for imported heavy vehicles are going up to Euro VI (or equivalent) which should also clean up the trucking fleet significantly over time. This is also a response to Australia updating their standards.