Yahoo Finance Major reason stopping electric cars taking over Australia right now: 'Pretty far behind'
Australia has been called on to increase the number of charging stations across the country.
While electric cars (EVs) have been billed as the way of the future, experts believe Australia needs to massively ramp up its number of charging stations to reduce "anxiety" in wannabe owners. While some EV owners can charge their cars at home, many don't have that luxury due to a lack of garage or because they're in an apartment.
That means these Aussies have to rely on public charging locations lightly dotted around the country and that's enough to prevent others from jumping on the bandwagon. Trevor Long, the host of the Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars podcast and EV owner, highlighted a big problem with this reliance to Yahoo Finance after taking a road trip around New South Wales to test the country’s charging network.
Long discovered charging stations were not just few and far between, but some of them didn't work. This is especially a concern in rural Australia, where Aussies usually have to travel long distances.
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Dominique van den Berg, Energy Networks Australia chief executive, told the Australian Financial Review that EV sales won't boom here like in other regions of the world until there are more places to charge.
“A third of Australians won’t get an EV because they’re worried about range anxiety, and they’re worried about the lack of public charging,” she said. “And so Australia is pretty far behind on EVs and is even further behind on public charging infrastructure.”
Even though EVs have only been around for a few years, there's still a long way to go until they get close to the infrastructure supporting petrol cars.
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Across Australia, there are roughly 2,500 charging stations. For comparison, there are approximately 6,500 petrol stations, which have several bays to let motorists fill up. For an even bigger comparison, EV drivers in Canada can choose from 7,000 charging locations.
Van den Berg said there is one charging station for every 10 electric cars overseas. However, in Australia, there is one station for 35 cars.
There has been a huge increase in electric vehicle sales in Australia, with approximately 198,000 driving on our roads — two-thirds of which have been purchased since 2022.
The federal government is trying to ease the anxiety of drivers doing lengthy trips. It has committed to building fast chargers every 150 kilometres on national highways.
It will hopefully overcome a sight that has been seen over recent public holidays, where long queues of EVs patiently wait at charging stations for their turn to juice up.
Australia is about to get an influx of EVs
More than a dozen Chinese EV brands have announced or are expected to launch in the Australian market in the next few months.
With so much competition, car expert Paul Maric reckons there will be some incredible prices that will be unavoidable for Aussies.
"It's just an exciting time for the car industry," he told Yahoo Finance.
"It's worth pointing out, five or 10 years ago, Chinese cars, you wouldn't touch them with a bargepole because they were unsafe. They weren't very well-engineered. They didn't really have great technology.
"These days, they're hiring all the latest engineers from all the European car companies. The product that is coming to Australia is safe. And it is great to drive, so all of this stuff is going to just mean more competition for consumers."
With that in mind, Australian infrastructure to support this influx of EVs needs to ramp up.
On the federal level, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said the government is "working quickly to ramp up EV charging across Australia to ensure easier, cheaper holiday weekend driving".
The NSW government is aiming to fix the issue of unit residents needing access to chargers by dedicating $10 million to retrofit 100 apartment buildings with EV charging stations.
Jake Whitehead, head of policy at the Electric Vehicle Council, said governments across the country desperately need to follow suit.
"We're heading in the right direction in terms of seeing those networks increase and more chargers become available, but we know there's some serious challenges in terms of the numbers of chargers and the reliability of those chargers," he said.
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