Two years back, Kirk Morison mulled over purchasing an electric vehicle (EV) but ultimately chose against it due to worries about driving range and the availability of charging stations.
Recently, his perspective has shifted. Now, he joins a growing number of Australians opting for EVs as the cost of petrol and diesel climbs steeply.
“About a month or two ago, we started to realize that choosing an EV might have been the better route,” Morison shares with SBS News.
Living in Sydney and currently involved in building a new house, Morison began to revisit the idea of EVs after observing the significant battery and solar requirements for modern constructions.
The surge in petrol and diesel prices, largely driven by the conflict in the Middle East, has hastened this transition.
Morison says he placed an order for a BYD Sealion this week — but it’s unclear when he’ll get his new car. Demand is so great that some dealerships have stopped offering test drives.
His current Ford Ranger ute runs on diesel, which is now costing the father-of-three around $200 a week.
“Even if [petrol and diesel prices] came back to original levels, there’s still an incredibly strong financial case to move to an EV,” he says.
Changing perceptions around EVs
Morison’s initial concerns about access to EV charging stations and driving range have eased in the two years since he bought the ute.
Coming out of the COVID pandemic, he says his family had planned to do lots of camping and outdoor leisure activities, but ultimately found they didn’t have the time.
Reflecting on his driving habits, he also realised the ute was mainly being used for trips to and from work, and to take his three kids to activities.
While it’s occasionally useful for transporting surfboards or construction materials related to their renovation, Morison says he feels they could achieve the same result with a different vehicle.
When you start sitting down and actually being more conscious of what you’re using the vehicle for, then we realised this actually makes a lot of sense.
Morison drives around 50-60km a day on average and can easily recharge overnight at home.
For the one or two longer trips a year the family may want to take, Morison says there are apps available to help figure out where to stop for charging.
EV charging blackspots
While access to charging stations may be a concern for some, at-home charging is the most common way to refuel.
Swinburne University professor of transport technology Hussein Dia says those who can plug in their EV at home will also save the most money because residential electricity rates are usually cheaper, especially if you’re charging during the day or other off-peak periods, and even more so if you have solar panels.
“The better the charging at home, the higher the benefits,” Dia says.
Most EVs can travel 400 to 500km on a single charge, which would enable them to drive around 30km per day for a week before needing to recharge.
“This means … people don’t need to charge every day,” Dia says.
Most EV owners only need access to public chargers if they can’t charge at home, or when travelling longer distances — for example, from Brisbane to Sydney or Melbourne.
These chargers are generally run by private operators but can be a lot faster than refuelling at home, taking as little as 15 minutes for a top-up.
In densely populated urban areas, Dia says there is usually a public charger within two to five kilometres of someone’s home, but in regional areas, it might be hundreds of kilometres away.
“On these longer routes, yes, you need to plan ahead, and you need to see where the chargers are,” he says.
Coverage along routes up and down the east and west coasts is quite good, but chargers in inland areas can be harder to find.
“This is where the charging deserts are.”
South Australian resident and Australian Electric Vehicle Association (AEVA) national president James Pickering says charging can be difficult in rural and remote areas, for example, north of Coober Pedy in South Australia, up into the Northern Territory.
There are no fast chargers along the Barkly Highway between the Northern Territory and northern Queensland, and parts of inner northern Queensland.
Better infrastructure is currently being built along the Great Western Highway in Western Australia, where there is also a shortage.
Dia believes governments need to do more to provide incentives or create partnerships with charging companies to improve coverage.
You need to have infrastructure everywhere, and Australia is quite a large place.
He says WA has the best coverage because the government identified priority routes for “electric highways”.
He says governments in the United Kingdom, the United States and New Zealand have introduced policies aiming to install EV chargers every 60 to 80km.
But AEVA vice president Jo Oddie notes that you can still find a way to charge an EV in most places.
“The reality is there’s always a power point — [there’s] more power points than service stations.”
Finding where to charge
The most comprehensive resource for finding charging stations is the crowd-sourced PlugShare online map.
Some states, such as NSW, offer their own maps, but these are not exhaustive.
Chargers offered by businesses, homeowners or community groups are also available but not always included on maps. Organisations such as ivygo allow for details of community EV chargers to be shared with motorists.
Chargers are also increasingly being installed by accommodation providers so guests can charge their EVs at night. Airbnb and Booking.com provide the option to filter venues to find those with EV charging.
Pickering says there’s been significant investment in charging infrastructure across Australia over the past 18 months.
Fast and ultra-fast charging, in particular, has been prioritised along highways.
He adds: “There’s slower destination charging that you might find somewhere you dwell for a number of hours.”
In major cities, some suburbs still don’t have access to a large number of public chargers and this will likely be needed to help those who can’t charge at home — such as apartment dwellers — to switch to EVs.
But chargers are increasingly being installed in shopping centre carparks, on street poles and around workplaces — supported by businesses and all levels of government.
Kai Li Lim, who researches EV usage and charging patterns at the University of Queensland, says people also need to be aware of what he calls the “charging curve”.
Fast chargers will charge a battery very quickly in the first few minutes, but then slow down. This means a battery can go from 0 to 80 per cent charge in the same amount of time it takes to go from 80 to 100 per cent.
That’s why as EV drivers accumulate experience … they start to realise that [they] don’t actually need to charge all the way to 100 per cent at a public charger because that’s going to take more time.
A mistake people often make when they first buy an EV, Lim says, is treating it like a mobile phone and charging it every night.
“[Later] they realise this charging curve does exist, they get into a trend where they’re charging the EV once or twice every week.
“Twice a week is usually the average.”
He also notes that not every EV supports ultra-fast charging, which means a driver could be paying more and not reaching the charging speeds they want.
Range anxiety replaced by queue anxiety
Even when chargers are available, Dia says they may not always work, leading to “queue anxiety” about longer waiting periods.
He says the reliability of chargers is important.
“Otherwise, people lose confidence and you cannot plan ahead.”
Under the National Electric Vehicle Strategy, EV charging plugs in Australia must have at least 98 per cent annual uptime — meaning the amount of time they are operational and available for use.
“That’s actually quite lax — they’re saying that for every year, you have about one week of downtime,” Lim says.
In the UK, 99 per cent uptime is required, while the US stipulates 97 per cent uptime.
Despite these guidelines, Lim says the actual functionality is likely a lot lower.
He explains that if a charger can connect to the internet, it is assumed to be working, but this is not always the case.
Sometimes people can be physically blocked from using one by vegetation, another vehicle, or because it’s been vandalised.
A 2024 study by the University of California, which sent students out to test chargers across California, found that just over 70 per cent of charge attempts succeeded.
Issues included traffic congestion at charging stations, damaged or offline chargers, difficulty using apps to find locations, and malfunctioning chargers.
Lim says it would likely be a similar situation in Australia.
More accountability needed
Lim says grants are often given to providers for the construction of charging stations, with little or no consideration for the chargers’ maintenance and lifespan.
He believes companies should be held accountable, whether through penalties or licensing, and supports stronger regulation, potentially in the form of an ombudsman or independent body to monitor operators and investigate service issues.
Lim says some products, such as Charge@Large, an app created by the Electric Vehicle Council to show real-time availability of charging points, are trying to address this problem, but rely on operators opting in to share their data, which they can be reluctant to do.
Often, the functionality of a charger isn’t tested until someone tries to use it.
Lim says other technologies, such as cameras, or improved crowdsourcing may need to be considered, although there are issues around privacy and data sensitivity to consider.
We are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on chargers using taxpayer money … but there’s quite little consideration given to the lifespan and longevity of electric chargers, and to make the operators of the chargers be accountable for their own infrastructure.
“I think that’s the gap right now we have to address.”
While there are still issues to resolve, Pickering notes EV drivers are overwhelmingly satisfied with their purchase.
“We find that only about 3 per cent of people [in Australia], once they’ve driven an EV for a while, would consider changing back to a petrol or diesel car,” Pickering says.
“And the global average for that — with our peers around the world — is less than 10 per cent.
“So just be careful — you might like it.”
For the latest from SBS News, download our app and subscribe to our newsletter
