50 Victoria Street
Private Bag 6995
Wellington 6141
New Zealand
T 64 4 894 5400
F 64 4 894 6100
www.nzta.govt.nz
29 October 2021
Dr Tamsyn Hilder
Lead Data Scientist for Products
Dot Loves Data
[FYI request #16703 email]
REF: OIA-8786
Dear Tamsyn
Request made under the Official Information Act 1982
Thank you for your email
of 10 September 2021 requesting the following information under the Official
Information Act 1982 (the Act):
We are developing a tool to help businesses and governments organizations understand New
Zealander's use of environmentally conscious lifestyle choices. As part of this work, we are
attempting to develop a metric that captures the likelihood of individuals using green personal
transport such as electric vehicles, in contrast to traditional personal transport such as diesel or
petrol vehicles. In this regard we would like a dataset that specifies, for each 2021 Statistical Area
2 across New Zealand:
- Total car registrations: The total number of vehicles registered.
- Total electric car registrations: The number of electric vehicles registered, where electric is
defined as the categories electric, electric fuel cell hydrogen and electric fuel cell other.
- Total hybrid car registrations: The number of hybrid vehicles registered, where hybrid is defined
as the categories plugin petrol hybrid, plugin diesel hybrid, petrol hybrid, diesel hybrid, electric
[petrol extended], electrc [diesel extended], petrol electric hybrid and diesel electric hybrid.
On 8 October 2021 Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency extended this request until 29 October as a
capability that would enable Waka Kotahi to gather the data in the Statistical Area 2 (SA2) format you
have requested was under development and required multiple searches through large quantities of
data. It was expected that the development of this capability would take 10-15 working days; however,
this capability is still under development as of now and we are not able to locate the data.
Therefore, I am refusing your request under section 18(e) of the Act that the document alleged to
contain the information requested does not exist.
Under section 28 of the Act, you have the right to ask the Ombudsman to review my decision to refuse
part of this request. The contact details for the Ombudsman can be located at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz.
Our Statistical Analysis team is continuing to work on developing this capability and we may be able to
fulfil this request at a later date. We encourage you to contact Maurice Forman, Principal Advisor,
Business Intelligence, by email to [email address] to discuss this matter further.
Yours sincerely
Galina Mitchelhill
Senior Manager, Research and Analytics
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