The Great Electric Cherry Migration

The diesel price is now around $4 a litre. But electric trucking is already here and it's already economic - and Rewiring has experienced the joys of running on electrons firsthand. ICYMI, earlier this year, we sent 123 boxes of electric cherries north for the summer as part of the Great Electric Cherry Migration. We upped the stakes a bit this time, however, and roped in Etrucks' Ross Linton, one of the country's true electrification heroes, to drop them off to all our MPs at Parliament in an electric Deepway truck. The price shock has turned more attention towards electric options at the big end of town and shown us how vulnerable we are to imported oil - and how little has been done to reduce that reliance. As Linton points out, now is an even better time than usual to go electric given the high prices and incentives available to heavy vehicles. And as chair of the New Zealand Trucking Association David Boyce says, this crisis has shown that the Government needs to help drive the transition to an economy that runs on New Zealand-made energy with regulatory changes and infrastructure investment. Even when the diesel price drops, Linton says electric trucks will still make economic sense - and they will always make sense when it comes to improving our energy security.