September 2025 Newsletter
Greetings HVTT family from New Zealand
It seems like an age since Quebec and HVTT18 and thank you Julien, Jonathan and the team at Université Laval for a fabulous symposium. In my role it’s easy to get swept along by the issues we face here but I’ve always found the HVTT symposia are a great way of bringing a sense of reality to what’s happening internationally in terms of research, technical development and policy areas.
To demonstrate the value HVTT brings, fellow Kiwis, Doug Latto and Mark Robilliard, will join me to share their learnings and insights at the Institute of Road Transport Engineers of New Zealand biennial International Conference in November this year.
We are a small national geographically a long way from the rest of the world and while there was some commonality in the challenges I heard at HVTT18, there are quite big differences in managing them.
Vehicles: the vast majority of our heavy trailers are made here in New Zealand, however for trucks (powered units) we rely mainly on manufacturers from Europe, US and Japan. My takeouts from HVTT18 are that apart from their use in relatively constrained environments, fully autonomous vehicles are still some way away, as is significant progress decarbonizing the heavy fleet via alternative energy.
With electrification, it was some consolation to see we aren’t the only nation facing challenges with heavy BEV axle weights. It was also good to see the trials and research of e-logging trucks in Sweden as the small numbers brought some reality to a transition of any substance here update in the short term. The discussion I found even more useful was that on providing electrical energy for e-trucks as I feel not enough quality discussion is taking place here in that regard.
While around 80-85% of New Zealand’s electricity generation is currently from renewable sources, we are reliant on fossil fuels for 99% of transport energy and around 60% of industrial energy. Therefore, from a decarbonisation strategy perspective it makes sense to electrify our fleet.
However, the impact on electrical energy production is quite startling. Over the last 25 years or so, electricity demand has grown about 14 per cent from about 35 TWh to 40 TWh with most of that growth occurring in the first third of that period. In 2050 scenario forecasting undertaken by our Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment indicates that demand will range between 53.6TWh and 72.1 TWh or have grown between 34 and 80 per cent. That is a startling increase, particularly in a country where only a few months ago mainstream media was reporting an energy crisis and calling for urgent reform as New Zealand faces soaring costs and supply problems.
While an electrical road system may not be a solution for New Zealand, the thinking and planning on charging infrastructure needs to be carefully considered.
Infrastructure: I was impressed by the amount of thinking and planning in North America to ensure there is logical and rational investment in road infrastructure given the impacts of climate change.
I was also fascinated by the increasing level of delays at seaports and that this is not uncommon in many international jurisdictions. Based on overseas practice, over the last year or so some ports in New Zealand have been rolling out “Booking Fees” as a means of better managing congestion. If we are to avoid the long delays overseas, then a lot more strategic thinking and planning needs to occur here.
A current significant concern for roading is the length of our 3-year government term. Right now, the Government is progressing one of the biggest transport and infrastructure programmes in decades. That includes Roads of National and Regional Significance, record levels of road maintenance investment, and critical revenue reform: a transition to universal Road User Charges, time-of-use charging, and updated tolling arrangements. These are long-term reforms and investments. They cannot be delivered within a single three-year term, and they are too important to be delayed, cancelled, or reset.
However, the result of next year’s election is currently anyone’s guess. A poll last week showed the left and right blocks deadlocked on 60 seats each. This highlights the uncertainty our country is facing and that poses a real risk for transport and infrastructure.
The legislation enabling Time of Use (Congestion charging) continues to progress. Our organisation pleaded a case that given freight demand is inflexible, congestion charges will not result in material changes in heavy vehicles travelling at peak times and therefore freight vehicles and public transport vehicles should be exempt from paying charges. Unfortunately, but not altogether unsurprisingly, freight vehicle operators will need to pay the charges.
Drivers: it was little consolation, but I heard and saw that we are not alone in facing our driver shortage challenges and the development of the EU was a fascinating additional complexity for Europe.
We have faced similar but different challenges with overseas drivers playing a significant role in addressing the shortage we faced a couple of years ago. As the economy has cooled demand has subsided and currently the main issues are the English language test for migrant drivers and, where we have reciprocating recognition agreements in place, the reliance on overseas licenses as a good indicator of driver competency.
Notwithstanding, our driver demand issue has only temporarily abated, with some recent work we commissioned showing that drivers aged 65 and over now make up more than 10% of the workforce therefore we expect an issue with that tail.
High productivity vehicles: The work shared by Loes Aarts and Tim Breemersch about progressing heavy vehicle productivity now being a “necessity” was insightful. Given there are so many challenges now, economic, environmental, and social, this simply makes sense.
In June our transport minister committed to some dimension and mass rules reform. I envisage that, despite the overseas learnings, there will a desire from our government officials to prove there are benefits from increased productivity however our organisation will be working hard to convince officials to take the lead from overseas and follow something like EMS1 and EMS2.
Rugby and weather: our country’s long history of winning rugby matches, regardless of the international opposition, is fading. And, unfortunately, I can’t blame the heavy vehicle issues for that but on the positive side, our hours of daylight are getting longer, and the weather is getting warmer.
Nga mihi / Regards,
Dom Kalasih
Treasurer
