Changing to an electric vehicle

The age of electric vehicles is dawning, albeit a little slower down under. Here’s your guide to the transition from petrol to electric.

In this Article:

Distance and right-hand drive mean Australia is lagging behind most of the world in the EV game

Expensive batteries mean expensive upfront costs

A lack of government regulations to deter petrol cars in Australia is also hampering efforts for cheaper electric cars

Ultimately Australia will catch up to the rest of the world but it may take a few years yet.

There’s no doubt about it – electric vehicles are having a moment. An important, global moment at that. Almost one in five new car registrations in the EU in 2021 were for electric vehicles, with Norway clocking a whopping 65 per cent of new car sales.

China is the world’s biggest electric vehicle market, with sales on track to meet 20 per cent well before the 2025 target. In a nation of 1.4 billion souls, that’s a fair few electric vehicles. Carmakers like Audi, Nissan and Mazda are even setting impressive timelines to become 100 per cent electric by the early 2030s.

Yet in Australia, less than two per cent of new car sales are electric. Yep, a measly two per cent. Just 20,665 vehicles sold in 2021 in our car-obsessed nation were electric, and it’s estimated our wide brown land is home to as few as 35,000.

Why is Australia behind the rest of the world when it comes to electric vehicles?

Why are we lagging behind the rest of the world? One of the biggest reasons is simple geography, says Chris Jones, president of the Australian Electric Vehicle Association.

“We’re a small right-hand drive market on the opposite side of the world, so we’re typically the last to get any new vehicles unless it's specifically been built for our market,” he says.

“Manufacturers will go for the easiest, most insatiable market first, so that is left-hand drive, northern hemisphere. When you can put all of your manufactured cars on a train and send them to the country next door, that’s where they go first.”

Another big barrier is upfront sticker price. Even though the average electric vehicle driver saves $1,600 on fuel costs each year and about $400 on maintenance, the cost of a new vehicle is a lot more than the average petrol-powered car.

“An electric vehicle has a big battery in it, and the battery is an expensive piece of kit,” says Ross De Rango, Head of Energy and Infrastructure at the Electric Vehicle Council.

“There is a substantial difference in cost between an internal combustion engine vehicle and the equivalent battery electric vehicle.”

And then there’s government regulations – or lack thereof – which make the local market decidedly unappealing for carmakers. Europe, the US and many other developed economies have fuel efficiency standards that penalise vehicle makers if they don’t bring enough low-emission vehicles to market. “We don’t have those standards in Australia,” says De Rango. This means carmakers have a strong financial incentive to send most of their electric vehicles to those markets rather than shipping them all the way to Australia.

Making the transition to an electric vehicle

The barriers are big, but here’s the thing: Aussies want to go electric. Recent research by The Australia Institute found the majority of us support the introduction of a government policy subsidising the purchase of new electric vehicles as well as a ban on the sale of new fossil-fuelled cars by 2035.

Jones says introducing regulations that discourage the sale of petrol cars will have a huge impact on the viability of an electric vehicle market. “It’s a minimal financial input kind of change that will bring about really rapid change. All of a sudden, we will become an attractive market to manufacturers to sell electric vehicles.”

Some states have introduced subsidies for new electric vehicle purchases. Prices, too, are expected to come down.

“A few years ago, if you wanted to buy an electric vehicle, it was a Tesla at $150,000. Now you can buy an electric vehicle from MG in the $40,000 to $45,000 price range,” De Rango says. “The vehicles are getting cheaper, and that will continue to happen as battery costs fall.”

With global demand for electric vehicles expected to take off in coming years, Jones says Australia will eventually catch up to the rest of the world.