Owning a car used to be a fairly simple affair. You bought the car you liked, filled it with whatever fuel it required, talked about horsepower at BBQs and occasionally wondered why your neighbour had bought a beige Toyota Corolla.
Then came the electric car. Suddenly, the humble act of getting from A to B became a philosophical statement. You weren’t just driving a car anymore. You were apparently making a declaration about the environment, technology, politics, your bank balance and, in some cases, your entire personality.
And while the argument over electric vehicles versus internal combustion engines has been bubbling away for years, I’d argue that Tesla owners helped turn it from a debate into a tribal war. Not all Tesla owners, obviously. But enough of them. And perhaps nothing illustrates this better than their personalised number plates.
Welcome to the EV superiority complex
Personalised number plates have been around in New Zealand for decades. They’re essentially automotive vanity plates, a small, expensive opportunity to tell the world something about yourself. NZTA says personalised plates can contain up to six characters and can include messages or slogans. There were 334,789 vehicles carrying personalised plates in New Zealand in 2025, according to NZTA data, or roughly seven percent of the country’s vehicle fleet.
So personalised plates themselves aren’t the problem, the problem is what some people choose to put on them. Because somewhere along the line, some Tesla owners decided that their EV shouldn’t merely be electric. It should announce that it is electric, preferably while having a dig at everyone who hasn’t joined the club.
Plates celebrating electric propulsion are harmless enough. But when the message becomes essentially “look at me, I’m electric and you’re an idiot for not being” it changes the conversation. And here’s the uncomfortable bit for the EV community: You can’t spend years telling people they’re stupid for driving petrol cars and then act surprised when they stop listening.
The Tesla effect
Tesla didn’t invent electric vehicles. It didn’t invent environmental consciousness. And it certainly didn’t invent smugness. But Tesla did something incredibly important for EVs. It made them aspirational.
The original Model S wasn’t some miserable little eco-box designed to punish you for caring about the planet. It was fast, desirable, technologically advanced and, in the right circumstances, properly exciting. Tesla effectively told consumers: “You don’t have to sacrifice performance and technology to drive electric.” That was brilliant.
But somewhere along the way, a section of the Tesla community also developed the idea that driving a Tesla wasn’t simply a transportation choice. It was a statement of intellectual superiority. And that’s where things started getting spicy.
There is anecdotal evidence of this perception within New Zealand’s own online car community. A 2022 discussion specifically questioned why so many Teslas appeared to carry personalised plates, with commenters suggesting that some owners used them to signal their EV identity.
Sure, that’s not scientific evidence, but it does demonstrate that the stereotype existed well before today’s more heated EV arguments. And once you start putting slogans on the back of your car, you’re effectively inviting everyone behind you to join the conversation.
Whether they want to or not.
“But my EV is better!” Is it? Maybe. That’s the beauty of cars. An EV can be dramatically quicker than an equivalent petrol car. It can be whisper quiet, incredibly refined and exceptionally cheap to run in the right circumstances.
Instant torque is addictive, one-pedal driving is clever, home charging is ridiculously convenient. And for someone commuting 30km to work every day, plugging the car in overnight can be considerably easier than visiting a petrol station. But none of that makes an ICE vehicle stupid. It simply makes an EV a better solution for some people. And that’s a distinction that seems to have been lost.
The internal combustion engine isn’t some technological equivalent of the horse and cart. It remains an extraordinarily sophisticated machine. Petrol and diesel vehicles can travel hundreds of kilometres without stopping, refuel in minutes, tow heavy loads, operate in remote areas and provide an emotional connection that EVs still struggle to replicate. And yes, they make noise, sometimes gloriously so. For some of us, that’s the point.
Then came the counterattack
Naturally, if one group starts waving a metaphorical flag in the face of another group, the other group eventually waves one back. Suddenly EV owners were being called smug. ICE drivers were being labelled dinosaurs. EV owners accused petrol drivers of destroying the planet. Petrol drivers accused EV owners of being virtue-signalling rich people. The internet, naturally, did what the internet does best: It made everything considerably worse.
And the irony is that both sides actually have legitimate arguments. EVs have genuine advantages. ICE vehicles have genuine advantages. Hybrids have genuine advantages. Plug-in hybrids have genuine advantages. Diesels still make enormous sense for some applications. And if hydrogen, synthetic fuels or some other technology eventually becomes viable at scale, we’ll probably have another argument about that too. The idea that there is one drivetrain that is perfect for everyone is nonsense.
The personalised plate problem
Here’s where I think the Tesla community needs to take a little responsibility. If you’ve got a personalised plate that says something amusing about your EV, brilliant. If it celebrates electric performance, range or your particular model, knock yourself out. But if your plate exists primarily to tell the ICE driver behind you that their car is obsolete, stupid or morally inferior, don’t be surprised when they start resenting you.
Because you’re no longer promoting EVs. You’re promoting tribalism, and tribalism is incredibly effective at making people defend things they otherwise wouldn’t care about.
It’s the same reason football supporters wear team colours. The same reason Apple and Android users argue about phones. The same reason people will defend a particular car brand as though they personally designed it. Once your choice becomes part of your identity, criticism of the product starts feeling like criticism of you. And that’s when rational conversation goes out the window.
The funny thing is, we’re all car people
This is what makes the whole argument so ridiculous. An EV owner and an ICE owner have considerably more in common than they have differences. They both complain about traffic. They both swear when someone cuts them off. They both know the pain of a puncture. They both have an unhealthy interest in horsepower. They both look at the fuel/charging bill and occasionally wonder whether walking might be cheaper. And they both, fundamentally, like cars.
Yet we’re increasingly being encouraged to pick a side. Team Battery or Team Combustion. It’s automotive tribal warfare. And Tesla, whether intentionally or not, became one of the biggest symbols of that divide.
Don’t blame the car
The important thing here is that none of this is really about Tesla. Nor is it about EVs. It’s about people. Give humans anything remotely interesting and we’ll find a way to turn it into an argument. The smartphone became Apple versus Android. Coffee became independent café versus Starbucks. Cycling became roadies versus mountain bikers.
And now cars have become ICE versus EV. The technology is simply the latest battlefield. And perhaps we need to stop pretending that buying an EV automatically makes someone enlightened, just as buying a V8 doesn’t automatically make someone a climate-denying dinosaur.
There are plenty of EV owners who couldn’t care less about converting anyone. There are plenty of petrol drivers who would happily own an EV tomorrow if the price, range, charging infrastructure and lifestyle made sense. And there are plenty of people who simply like both.
I’m one of them.
Because you can appreciate the instant shove of an electric motor and still get excited when a six-cylinder engine fires up. You can enjoy the silence of an EV and still love the mechanical theatre of a manual gearbox. You can recognise the advantages of electrification without pretending that every petrol car is suddenly worthless.
Perhaps the real problem isn’t ICE or EV
Maybe the real problem is that we’ve forgotten the difference between making a choice and making a judgement. Buy an EV because you like it. Buy a diesel because you tow. Buy a hybrid because you want the best of both worlds. Buy a petrol sports car because you enjoy driving. Buy whatever works for you.
Just don’t assume that your choice makes you better than the person in the lane next to you. And if you really want a personalised number plate, go for it. Just remember that the six characters on the back of your car are effectively a tiny billboard.
If the message says “I’m electric” that’s fine. If the message says “I’m better than you because I’m electric”, don’t be surprised if the bloke in the old V8 Falcon suddenly finds himself very interested in demonstrating exactly how much noise his exhaust can make.
Because perhaps the great ICE versus EV war wasn’t really started by batteries, petrol, government policy or climate change. Perhaps it started with something far more human.
The moment we stopped saying, “I like my car,” and started saying, “My car makes me better than you.” And that’s a debate no amount of fast charging is going to fix.
