At Atomic EV we provide PEV options to cater for a wide range of budgets, from quality electric skateboards for under $1000 and electric unicycles under $1200 to the premium Hurricane 2-in-1 for $2999 and V13 for $6899. Some other PEV are much more, with e-foils from reputable brands ranging in prices between $19000 and $25500.
Although great value for money, convenient and providing many savings for transportation over fossil-fuel modes of transport some of them are not cheap, so for many riders purchase financing is necessary.
At Atomic EV we’ve investigated what options there are in New Zealand for financing your next PEV purchase. We’ve excluded finance companies as they typically charge very high fees and/or interest rates. Here are our results after discussing with the main banks in New Zealand.
Disclaimer: We at Atomic EV are not financial advisors and are not offering financial advice. We strongly recommend you verify the information we provide here for yourself and speak to your bank or a financial advisor before committing to any significant debt. Please do let us know if you’ve got any updates so we can try to keep this information current.
ANZ
ANZ have two PEV financing options available for their customers, and have confirmed with Atomic EV that our range of PEV qualify for their loans. For those people that have an existing home mortgage with ANZ, the bank offers a Good Energy Home Loan top up (https://www.anz.co.nz/personal/home-loans-mortgages/loan-types/good-energy/) at 1% pa interest for a PEV purchase of at least $3000 (lesser amounts considered on a case-by-case basis), and up to $80000 maximum. For non-mortgage customers they offer personal loans at 12.9% for PEV purchases. Most loans applications are determined within an hour and usual credit criteria apply.
ASB
ASB offers a Better Home Loans Top Up (https://www.asb.co.nz/home-loans-mortgages/better-homes-top-up.html) to their mortgage holders also at 1%. However, unlike the other major banks ASB currently only support the purchase of an electric or hybrid car, not other electric vehicles. ASB says it is “constantly reviewing and updating our product offering”, but in our view is disappointing compared to the other Australian bank offerings. Their unsecured personal loans for their existing customers are currently advertised at 13.9% pa interest with $2000 minimum loan.
BNZ
Similar to ANZ, BNZ offers a Green Home Loan top up (https://www.bnz.co.nz/personal-banking/home-loans/manage-your-loan/top-ups/green-home-loan-top-ups), and have also confirmed the Atomic EV range of PEV are eligible (not just e-bikes). The loan is available to BNZ customers with home mortgages and is 1% pa interest for up to three years. For non-mortgage holding BNZ customers, the advertised personal loans start at 12.65%.
Kiwibank
Kiwibank is yet to come back to us about their loan options. However, they do not advertise any EV top ups for their home loans, and their personal loans from $2000 are run separately through Latitude/Gem (a finance company that charges between 9% and 30% interest pa).
TSB
In 2020 TSB stopped offering personal loans, and do not currently have any EV discounted rates. But they do point out that the plan to again offer personal loans to their customers and appreciate that they want to provide more support for environmentally friendly forms of transport in New Zealand.
Westpac
Westpac are unique in NZ as they offer an EV Loan specifically for financing electric vehicle purchases (https://www.westpac.co.nz/personal-loans/ev-loan/). The Westpac product team have confirmed that the loan can be used for a PEV purchase from Atomic EV (not just the EV range listed on their website). Currently Westpac charges 6.99% pa interest for the EV Loan, with no setup fee and does not require security, so no need to have a Westpac mortgage or use the PEV as security. Usual bank credit criteria do apply for the loan application.
In August 2023 Westpac announced interest-free electric vehicle loans of up to $50,000 for their existing home loan clients (https://www.westpac.co.nz/rednews/interest-free-lending-on-evs-announced/).
Buy Now Pay Later Schemes
Credit cards and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) schemes such as Klarna, Afterpay, and Zip are options for smaller purchases which can be paid back within a few months. Credit cards result in around 2-3% fees to the merchant (which is why some merchants include a surcharge on card payments) and high interest rates for the consumer on unpaid balances, whereas BNPL in New Zealand are free to the consumer if the payments are made on schedule, but result in much higher 6-7% charges to merchants. This is not much of an issue for high-margin items such as clothing, which are the most popular BNPL purchases, but studies show 30% of merchants increase their prices to customers by 4-5% on average when they decide to offer BNPL. Remember that next time you enter a non-clothing store offering BNPL as an option as you might be paying higher prices to subsidise the additional costs of BNPL users.
