There should be a rule: you get to ask for something once, but then that’s it.

The feebaters are back. The people who want you to pay for their cars.

Julie Anne Genter, back when she was in charge of stuff - mainly nutty ideas – thought this one was spectacular.

The fee bate would mean that the electric car would be discounted because the petrol car would have a tax on it.

She claimed, incorrectly and completely dishonestly, that the scheme would be self-funding.

Despite the fact that for it to be self-funding the right number of petrol cars with the right amount of tax had to be sold to cover off the cost of the right amount of subsidy on the EV, and given the scheme wasn’t up and therefore no cars had been sold under it.

She wouldn’t have the slightest idea as to what the consumer behaviour towards more expensive petrol car vs a cheaper EV might be.

That government and her ministership came and went, and thank god thanks to NZ First – remember them? – the scheme never saw the light of day and most of us with a loose connection to the real world breathed a sigh of relief.

And this is where my rule would come in. Having floated the fee bate scheme and it being rejected, we would never hear about it again. Which sadly we are, given my rule is not real.

So back they have come this week. The headline read “Government urged to introduce fee bate scheme for EVs”. So often these stories are written from press releases, and the press releases are written in a way that wacky ideas have never before been put forward and this is a bright new shiny thing that we all have to consider with urgency.

So once again, if the Motor Industry Association gets their way, we will be back down the rabbit hole of subsidisation, funded as it always is by some poor sap that doesn’t get consulted.

As I have said forever, you want an EV, go get one, go get four.  For the woke handwringers who are in charge of companies councils or government, go buy a fleet.

But buy them for the right reasons, not for virtue signalling brownie points. And most importantly don’t buy them using other people money.

Here is the test of a good product: do people want it? Will they use their own money to buy it? Will having bought one they buy another one?

For whatever reasons EVs, haven’t taken off. I could give you a bunch of reasons but we don’t have time. And what we also don’t have time for is yet another round of subsidy merry go round.

The fee bate was a dumb idea last year, the year before, and the year before that: its status as a dumb idea remains unchanged.