Australians are increasingly turning to electric vehicles (EVs) as the government pushes for cleaner transport. However, the lack of public charging infrastructure is a potential deterrent for mass EV takeup in the vast country. With less than a third the number of public chargers for every EV on the road compared with the global average, the challenge of installing chargers rapidly enough to meet the boom is not easy.
The government has doubled funding for cleaner transport to A$500 million ($339 million) and announced plans to set vehicle emissions standards. Electric vehicles sales are already trending up, accounting for 8% of all car sales in April, up from 1.1% a year earlier.
However, the risk is weak standards leave Australia a dumping ground for dirty cars, limit the supply of new EVs and undermine the economics of charge operators. To help get over the cloudy economics of installing chargers, the federal and state governments have been helping fund rollouts.
Australia’s abundant sunshine and the world’s highest per capita uptake of rooftop solar means home charging is not a major problem. The challenge is the expansion of public chargers, especially in regional areas, where the power infrastructure to support fast chargers is often scarce or absent.
The country’s public chargers tend to be underpowered, with 0.5 kilowatts of public charging per EV versus an average 2.4 kw worldwide. Expansion of public chargers is slow as operators face long delays connecting to the grid. Numerous studies must be done to make sure chargers, which often use as much power as several homes or businesses, do not dim the lights for existing customers.
If the new standards work to incentivise automakers to import sufficient clean cars, Australians will finally see a wider range of EVs in the market. With the government’s EV push, the challenge now is to rapidly install enough chargers to meet the boom.