“Easing the cost of new and used imported vehicles” was the pitch of transport minister Chris Bishop’s media release last Monday.

The means to that end was slashing by 80 percent the clean car standard - which incentivised sales of low- or zero-emission vehicles - by the end of the week.

Soon after, TVNZ’s political editor Maiki Sherman ran through those herself on 1News, even displaying the savings on the screen.

“This Corolla would see charges reduced by more than $6500,” she said, in the manner of a car yard commercial.

Bishop also said the changes would only have a minimal effect on emissions - and the main reason for changing the law now was that “the bottom’s fallen out of the EV market.”

“There just simply hasn’t been the demand there and they also haven’t been able to get the supply. It’s a double whammy.”

Among things that might affect demand - recent media reports about EV safety.

“As soon as there’s an EV that blows up or catches fire, it’s on the front page or it’s on the six o’ clock news. If it’s a diesel or a petrol car, you won’t hear about it,” Retirement Village Residents Association chief executive Nigel Matthews told Checkpoint.

When 28 cars were set alight in Whangarei Hospital’s car park a month ago, it was dry grass on a hot exhaust that started the blaze. But plenty of online speculation suggested an overheated EV could have started it.

A day later the driver of an electric bus died after it was engulfed in flames following a collision with a petrol powered car on Tamaki Drive in Auckland.

The busy road was closed for almost a day.

“Due to the bus’s electric battery, the area could remain hazardous,” a Police statement said.

That prompted keyboard warriors to conclude batteries in the buses were not just a hazard - but could have caused the fire.

Alarmed by what he called ‘misinformation’ about the Tamaki Drive crash - and “bizarre anti-EV propaganda” - Auckland City Councillor Richard Hills then took to social media himself.

He pointed out that Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) had confirmed the fire started from the petrol vehicle that hit that bus on Tamaki Drive, and bus company Kinetic found the electric bus’s batteries were undamaged.

“But all I saw everywhere was: ‘Told ya, told ya - EV buses and EV batteries’,” Hills told the Newstalk ZB Drive show.

That prompted an explainer from Stuff the next day: No. Electric buses aren’t catching fire because of their batteries.

Australian fire safety expert Emma Sutcliffe - who researches battery fires for Australia’s Department of Defence - told Stuff there had been only eight such fires in

Australia in three years to 2024, at a time when there were more than 180,000 EVs in use there.

While Auckland has had three events in a row, they are unconnected, she said.

“It’s just unfortunate that they’ve happened in a bit of a cluster,” she told Stuff.

“You should be far more concerned about the cheap lithium-ion batteries in your house than the ones powering your bus to work,” Emma Sutcliffe added.

But sometimes, the media give people the wrong idea.

Last year RNZ reported a Wellington man’s claim that his neighbour’s Tesla burst into flames in the garage next door. Eventually, FENZ ruled out electric vehicles or lithium-ion batteries as the cause. RNZ updated the story accordingly.

Dr Baisden took to social media himself to point out that none of the recent vehicle fires were caused by EVs or their batteries.

But if the risk is real - albeit remote in normal circumstances - how should media report incidents like the ones in Auckland recently?

“We know there’s a risk of EV myths and misinformation spread. The most interesting thing about these stories is that there were stories about EV fires that contained … no EV fire,” Dr Baisden told Mediawatch.

He cited New Zealand Herald and RNZ’s Checkpoint coverage of the Fairview community’s dilemma as failing to make clear that EVs pose a much lower fire risk than combustion engine vehicles.

A recent peer-reviewed study of four nations found more people believed misinformation about EVs than disagreed with it - including vehicles being more likely to catch fire.

But if it was reports of the recent bus fires that prompted the Fairview residents and management to discuss the issue, news editors can not ignore that context?

“They could have said the risk of EVs catching fire is about 60 times less than an equivalent petrol or diesel vehicle. Adjusted for the mileage, it’s maybe 20 times less,” Dr Baisden told Mediawatch.

“There’s other information that you could think about. Anything that can move you hundreds of kilometres in two tonnes of metal is going to have a lot of energy stored in it, so it can create a fire.”

“I feel like the retirement village residents - and the decisions that were going on there - were really let down by our information ecosystem.”

“This is a classic gap. We’re talking about something that actually hasn’t happened. There’s been no EV fire that’s been caused by an EV in New Zealand as yet.”