Can New Zealanders see themselves driving electric vehicles in the near future?

It may not be too far in the distant future when New Zealand's roads are quiet with the gentle hum of electric vehicles.

But is it all a pipe dream and can Kiwis see themselves getting into an EV any time soon?

The Government earlier revealed its first Emissions Reduction Plan which showed how emissions will be reduced over the coming decades as the country targets net-zero by 2050.

Part of the $2.9 billion plan will be allocated towards getting Kiwis out of their gas guzzlers and into electric vehicles. The new scrap-and-replace scheme will cost $569 million, subsidising low and middle-income families to ditch their clunkers for an EV.

In the new scheme, the Government would help Kiwis 'scrap' their old cars with a rebate to help buy new electric vehicles.

In just over a decade, if the Government's plan works out, almost a third of cars will be electric and we'll be driving 20 percent less.

"Twenty percent less for me would mean not going to work sometimes, so that ain't happening," one person said.

"I could probably ride a bike, or try and walk more, I don't do either of those things too much," another added.

But the Government's scrap and replace scheme is still two years away from being fully rolled out.

"At the very base of it, it's a wonderful thing. We want to see more EVs on the road, they're the future, but beyond that, there are some complications around supply and options of electric vehicles in the New Zealand market or the global market," Hayden Johnston of GVI Electric told The Project.

Last year, the Government introduced the clean car discount and it had an impact on EV sales  - they doubled in the space of a year. This new trade-in subsidy is expected to drive those sales even higher.

There's still no exact figure on how much it will be, but it'll likely need to be decent to make a dent.

Elsewhere overseas, in the Netherlands, people have been getting $6500 to buy an EV or more than $3000 for a used one.

The Japanese government gives people almost $10,000 and their target is way more ambitious than ours. While New Zealand is aiming for 30 percent of cars to be EVs by 2035, Japan is saying that all cars have to be environmentally friendly by then. 

In Norway, they're way ahead of the pack. Sixty-five percent of new cars sold last year were electric and they're stopping petrol car sales altogether in just three years.

Those countries have been given things like tax breaks, free parks, and the use of bus lanes as ways to get their people into an EV.

Back in New Zealand, some people are hesitant to get into an EV since there currently isn't one that meets their needs.

"It's a hard one because I'm a tradie, so unless there's better trade vehicles [I can't get one]," one person said.

Johnston said the EV market is still expanding.

"There's no utes available on the market, there's a very limited number of vans available," he said.

"We've got lots of wonderful smaller vehicles. But at the moment there's not an electric vehicle for everybody, certainly not in everybody's price range, even with the subsidy."

Watch the video above.