12 October 2007

Immediate release

Government plans unworkable stealth attack, says Hyundai

High-flying vehicle brand Hyundai is giving the government a hurry-up call to rethink its $60m plan to micro-dot all cars coming into the country.

Faced with several months of opposition the government remains tight-lipped over its controversial proposal tagged whole-of-vehicle marking, an attempt to control car theft by making parts traceable.

But Hyundai says officials have since learned the plan is expensive and unworkable. However there has been no back down from the government.

Suspecting a stealth attack, Hyundai labels the plan just another tax on vehicle owners: almost everyone.
“In fact it goes deeper than that,” commented the Executive Director of Hyundai Motors NZ, Philip Eustace. “The plan is totally unworkable without major change in the entire car import system.

“What we know now, but nobody has stated before, is that the government has been told all this by its own advisors.

“It’s now clearly understood within the vehicle industry that Land Transport and MoT officials have done their homework and discovered the government’s figures are all wrong.

“They haven’t allowed anything like enough time for the application of micro-dots to each vehicle, and they haven’t figured in allowances for the delays which are inevitable when you want to mark every single vehicle brought into the country.

“We are talking 18 to 20 thousand cars and SUVs each month, well over 200,000 a year.

"In a low-margin industry like this, with big holding costs and interest charges on the investment in imported vehicles, we're talking yet more red tape and costs that simply will have to be passed onto all car purchasers.

Mr. Eustace says the government guessed a cost of $88 per vehicle for the procedure, but that’s just the actual marking itself; now that people have been able to sit down and cost all the associated activity the real imposition is seen to be about triple that.

“Three months ago we made a public call for the government to look at the real costs and impracticalities. At that time we estimated a cost of about $250 a vehicle and it now seems we were almost right on the button.

“Yet the government, now given the correct information by its officials as we understand it, remains stonewall silent and the industry believes it is determined to push through this ill-judged proposal.

“It assumes that the industry can somehow gear up overnight to process all these cars; the reality of course is that just can’t happen.”

Representing a brand noted for its eco-friendly stance, Mr. Eustace says the proposal also fails on environmental grounds at the very time the government is talking green.

“An entirely new step, trucking hundreds of thousands of new vehicles from the wharf to the marking facility and back again … just imagine the extra carbon emissions from that!” he commented.

"Our initial estimate was an extra 25 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year but the figure could be much higher, depending on where the application centre might be. Hyundai would like to know how and where 20,000 cars a month are going to have the dots applied.”

All of this for a plan which Hyundai labels iniquitous and misguided.

“What’s proposed is the marking of all vehicles coming in, but the two million older vehicles already in New Zealand will be on our roads unmarked for another 15 to 20 years, and these are the very vehicles which are prone to theft.

“Even if you could somehow overcome all these problems and make the system work, you miss the mark: you clobber the new-car buyer, yet it’s the buyer of those used cars already in the New Zealand vehicle park this proposal is really aimed at.

“Ninety-eight percent of new cars don’t need all this anyway as they already incorporate advanced systems such as immobilisers and transponders in the keys.

“All marking does is helps make stolen vehicles easier to trace, it doesn’t actually stop theft.

“At $250 a car for 240,000 cars landed a year, it’s a 60 million-dollar-a-year cost for little effect.

“The Transport Minister and government need to come out from behind the veil of silence now, and announce they are going back to the drawing board on whole-of-vehicle marking,” Mr. Eustace said.

“This entire idea is unworkable and the government now knows it.”

·         Hyundai is on a meteoric rise in New Zealand with almost 400 percent growth in four years and numerous new locations among its 23 dealerships.  The brand has been imported into New Zealand by the Giltrap Group for the past 25 years.

·         Worldwide Hyundai was the sixth largest automaker in 2006, selling in 193 countries and employing 50,000 people.  Forty years old, Hyundai has targeted customer satisfaction as its 2007 keynote, part of the brand's overall aim to become global quality leader.

·         Hyundai is a committed sponsor of sports and cultural organisations in New Zealand and worldwide. See www.hyundai.co.nz

·         For further information about Hyundai vehicles in New Zealand, including high resolution images and an archive of press releases, log onto the dedicated Hyundai Media website at www.hyundai.co.nz/media

·         For the international media news room, where you can download press releases, high-resolution photos, as well as preview and request broadcast-standard video which will be delivered digitally or by tape, visit www.thenewsmarket.com/HyundaiMotor.  Registration and video is free to accredited media.

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