More than three million electric vehicles are expected to hit the road in Australia by 2030, creating what one expert has dubbed the biggest shift in transport since fuel.
Drivers will no longer fill up but charge up and holiday petrol price hikes will no longer hit hard.
But the massive change will also deliver new challenges, including questions about how to charge an electric car when you don’t have a garage with a suitable power point.
While 95 per cent of electric vehicles will be topped up at home, according to the NRMA, those living in older apartment blocks or without off-street parking will need to find alternative solutions to fuel next-generation vehicles.
It’s into this market that companies are launching solutions – and some claim Australia is in a unique position to avoid the speed-bumps suffered overseas.
Ben Haddock, future mobility lead from engineering firm Arup, says the country’s slow electric vehicle uptake compared to international peers could work in its favour.
“We’ve got a great opportunity to learn from the mistakes of what’s happened elsewhere, where the infrastructure hasn’t kept up with EV demand,” he says.
“If we let EVs come into the market and we’ve not got the infrastructure right, we’re going to have to pay a lot more money to fix it as an industry and a society.”
Mr Haddock pointed to issues with apartment buildings in the UK and Europe, where residents and body corporate groups have been forced to retrofit shared garages with charging points for electric cars.
Adding charging infrastructure and wiring after buildings have been erected, he says, is a much more expensive process than addressing it beforehand.
“Australia’s got some great opportunities to leapfrog some early challenges with infrastructure,” he says.
“We’re starting to think about how we plan for EV charging in new buildings and standards around how many parking spaces should be EV-capable.”
One law that could make a big difference to budding EV owners is Australia’s National Construction Code, which changed on October 1.
From May 2023, it will require new apartment buildings to facilitate the future installation of EV charging equipment.
However, it stops short of requiring developers to install chargers.
Residents of existing apartment buildings might find the transition to electric transport trickier.
Origin Energy’s head of e-mobility, Chau Le, says the energy retailer receives near-daily questions about how to add EV chargers to high-rise buildings and accommodate multiple electric cars.
“We see high-density buildings as one of the segments that really needs a lot of help, especially for brown-field apartment buildings where there isn’t existing electrical capacity or infrastructure to enable charging,” she says.
Ms Le says the energy retailer takes building managers through a multi-step process to gauge garage upgrades, including assessing a site and its electricity capacity, and working out what cabling, load management systems and software is needed to bill electricity back to apartment owners.
Demand for the upgrades has become so great that Origin has set up public workshops to solve problems, she says.
“We get lots of questions about how to provide (chargers) on a shared basis: is it at the individual residents’ car parks, how do they spread the cost of providing the infrastructure, then how do they re-allocate the resident’s costs back to the apartment?”
While costs for apartment buildings vary depending on the construction work required, Ms Le says installing a smart charger for one resident typically costs between $2500 and $3000.
Electric vehicle owners without access to off-street parking face a more challenging problem – how to charge an electric car overnight when it’s parked in public.
EVX chief executive Andrew Forster says the question is a common conundrum in Britain, where on-street parking is widespread.
The Australian firm has partnered with UK provider Connected Kerb to roll out 5000 charging points in 2022, including many that resemble old parking meters.
The electrical infrastructure is kept underground, ensuring the chargers have little visual impact on the streetscape.
“All you’ll see is a bollard and on the top of the bollard a socket,” Mr Forster says.
A similar solution could be used for workplaces and by councils to suit “long-dwell” electric vehicle parking of an hour or more, he says.
EVX plans to install 1000 EV charging points in Australia over the next two years to provide vehicle owners – and potential buyers – more opportunities to recharge outside shopping centres and repurposed petrol stations.
“People are used to filling their car up in a certain way,” Mr Forster says.
“They rock up to a petrol station, they fill it up and they leave, but it’s going to require a much broader mix when it comes to EVs.
“It won’t be convenient to sit on a fast charger for 20 minutes. We’re looking at the biggest shift in transportation since they created fuel, and the delivery mechanisms will be varied.”
Griffith University lecturer Anna Mortimore says the biggest issue that could hold back these developments in Australia – and electric vehicle adoption in general – is cost.
Economic modelling conducted for the Race for 2030 report, produced by an industry-led research centre, concluded the federal government should make major tax concessions for the capital costs of installing home chargers.
Dr Mortimore says full write-offs should be allowed as many Australians will need the extra financial support as EVs begin to dominate the car market.
“It has to be equitable,” she says.
