Electric Vehicle Nation – Can Australia Support EVs with the Current Infrastructure?

With EV sales making up a small 1.6% of all new vehicle registrations in 2021, one of the most cited
reasons that people are reluctant to take up electric vehicles is a lack of charging infrastructure. Savvy
looks into the current state of EV charging infrastructure and what’s planned for the future.

 700 new fast charging stations will be built around Australia in the next five years
 Federal investment of $24.55 million through the first round of Future Fuels Fund for 400 public fast
charging stations
 Federal Labor government proposes $39.3m additional investment in providing charging stations every
150km
 350kW Ultra-Rapid chargers provide a potential 400km of range in 15 minutes
 New EVs with industry leading 350kW maximum DC fast-charge rate claim to gain 111km range in 5
minutes

Historians have always noted Australia suffering from the “tyranny of distance” both internationally and
internally. We are remote as a continental island – a country that’s nearly 7.7 million km 2 in size – and
our major cities much more distant than other developed countries.

For example, the driving distance between Melbourne and Sydney is 878km; the distance between the
capitals of New York State (Albany) and adjacent New Jersey (Trenton) is approximately 330km.
The fully electric Nissan Leaf would be able to travel from Albany to Trenton comfortably with a full
range of 385km. However, it would need to stop at least twice to go from Melbourne to Sydney.
With petrol stations abundant in Australia, EV drivers may feel they could be left in the lurch. But is it as
dire as public perceptions seem?

In this report, we use the Electric Vehicle Council of Australia March 2022 data to answer questions such
as, how many public charging stations are there in Australia? How many are planned for the future?
Where are they now, and where will they be located? We investigate what’s available for EV owners and
prospective owners.

The types of EV charging stations

Electric vehicles – such as fully electric or Plug-in Hybrid Electric vehicles (HEV) – require electric powerfrom the grid to run (although not fully for Hybrids, which run on a mix of electric and petrol.)
EVs require DC power – which is either supplied at a charging station direct or converted from AC to DC
by the car’s internal converter. DC charging is the fastest way to charge an electric vehicle.
Typically, one kilowatt (kW) will add one kilometre for each ten minutes of charging.

AC public charging stations fall into the range of about 7kW to 40kW and are usually referred to as
“destination charging” stations, allowing cars to be recharged overnight. The cars themselves may only
get a fraction of that throughput after the conversion.

DC charging stations are much quicker in comparison and designed for immediate top-ups.

There are two types of DC public charging stations – above 50kW fast charging and below 50kw regular
charging.

At 50kW, a vehicle will add 50km of range (on average) for each ten minutes of charge.

The fastest available charging stations in Australia are 350kW “ultra-rapid” facilities, such as those
offered by providers like Chargefox, for example. Chargefox provides a theoretical 400km of range in 15
minutes, though, these are few and far between. More have been promised by state and federal
governments in the coming years.

Even if every DC charging point was capable of 350kW output, the vehicles themselves are limited by
what they can accept. Until recently, top of the line EVs in Australia with DC maximums of 110kW to
200kW were considered high, however the latest vehicles such as Hyundai’s Iconiq 5 and the Kia EV6
both have max per hour charge speeds of 350kW.*

Other factors affect total charge time however, such as batter size or capacity. Furthermore, EV battery
charging does not proceed in a linear fashion. kW charging power will peak early and decline as the
charge increases. As such, EV brands talk about time to charge from “10% – 80%”. Using the Iconiq 5 as
an example, it claims to take only 18 minutes to charge from 10-80% for both its long range and
standard battery.

*Savvy has no affiliation with any brands used as examples.

The number of public EV charging stations vs locations in Australia

Note that the number of public charging locations does not reflect the number of individual charging
points. There may be many points at one location.
Fast charging As of January 2022, there are 293 fast charging locations around Australia. This represents an increase of 85% since August 2020 (157).