Four surprising facts about electric vehicles in Australia

Concern about inadequate public EV charging infrastructure is often cited as a reason for the reluctance to purchase a full electric vehicle, and Australian EV owners do have fewer public charging points available to them compared to other developed nations.

The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Global EV Outlook 2025 revealed that in 2024, Australia had 76 EVs to one public charging point, compared with 33 EVs per public charger in the USA, 28 in Canada, and 25 in the UK.

The EU had 13 EVs per public charger, while China, which has become the global epicentre of EV manufacturing, had one public charger per 10 EVs.

All vehicles are getting bigger

As our vehicles’ proportions continue to grow, the global trend towards larger vehicles is also evident in EVs. The IEA’s report found that 70 per cent of EV models available globally in 2024 were large cars, SUVs, or pick-ups, compared to 65 per cent in 2023.

Real-world range

With liquid-fuelled vehicles, the manufacturer’s estimated fuel consumption per kilometre is generally lower than that which a motorist will experience in real-world driving.

The same is true for electric vehicles’ range – manufacturers generally underestimate the range a motorist will experience in the real world.

What is somewhat surprising is the size of the lag. The IEA found that the average real-world range of battery electric cars globally in 2024 was 340km.

However, the average manufacturer-stated EV range for battery electric models sold in Australia was 470km in 2023, up from 370km in 2021.

So real-world EV range has a lot of ground to make up.

If you’d like to know more about how real-world ranges in EVs and liquid-fuelled vehicles compare to the lab-tested ranges, see the Australian Automobile Association’s real-world testing results.

Bi-directional charging

Despite EV manufacturer ranges underperforming in on-road conditions, one space where EV batteries overperform is where their charge can be reversed to power a home using bi-directional charging.

Not all EVs currently have the capacity to do this, and even for those that do, other tech is needed to harness the charge in an EV battery to provide power to a home.

But as bi-directional charging does become more accessible, adopting Vehicle-to-Grid charging in just 10 per cent of Australia’s projected EVs could help meet more than one-third of Australia’s national electricity market’s storage needs in 2030, according to the IEA report.