Thousands of cars have been written off due to the extreme weather, prompting a warning from the Reserve Bank that prices for used cars could rise.

"We assume that the additional strain on resources, particularly in food, used cars, construction and maintenance materials, will increase quarterly inflation by about 0.3 percentage points in the March 2023 quarter, and an additional 0.3 percentage points in the June 2023 quarter," the Reserve Bank says in its latest Monetary Policy Statement.

"These effects are assumed to be largely temporary."

Turners Cars' chief executive officer Greg Hedgepeth told RNZ's Checkpoint the supply of used cars coming into the country has been down for quite sometime.

"Over the last year, I think it's going to be down approximately 30 per cent."

Hedgepeth says there are less used vehicles coming into the country right now and they are anticipating up to about 10,000 vehicles, due to the recent weather events, will be coming off the roads, being written off.

"There could be a short-term imbalance of supply and demand."

He says they are still assessing the situation in Napier.

On whether there is enough stock to cover the replacement of vehicles, Hedgepeth says there definitely is.

"At any given time, if you look at cars available for sale in the country it sort of hovers around that 70,000 mark.

"There is enough cars at any given time but what it might do though, is put some upward pricing pressure on those cars that are available as more people vie for the same cars.

In terms of price rises, Hedgepeth said it was difficult to tell but prices were holding up pretty high post-pandemic.

He says the Clean Car Discount Scheme implemented by the government on April 1, 2022, and the Clean Car Standard has driven up prices in the used car space.

"Those have already elevated prices reasonably high and we are probably yet to see the full impact of the Clean Car Standard."

Hedgepeth anticipates that prices will remain high in the short term.

On which models would be in demand, he says people will probably want to replaces the car written off to a similar car.

But, he says that car could cost a bit more now "especially if they bought it two or three years ago".

"That is potentially due to less of those cars in coming in now, or being hit with more fees as they're coming in into the country."

He says high emitting vehicles will cost more, "utes and cars with bigger engines".

-RNZ.