The Australian EV Council (EVC) has moved its reporting schedule from once a year to twice a year. The EV landscape is changing so fast that they need to report more often. The current report highlights that more EVs have been sold in the Australian vehicle market in the last 6 months than in the whole of last year. Please note — all speculation in this article about the future is just my opinion, extrapolated from the data in the report. It seems likely that Australia will start the steep climb up the S curve within the next 18 months.
Last year, the EV share of Australia’s overall auto market was 0.78%. It is now approaching 2%, and should be more so by the end of the year. From the fourth quarter, many new models of EVs will become available in Australia, including 8 from BYD. This will lead to a tripling of available EV models. The BYD EA1 (Dolphin) will become the cheapest EV available in Australia, eclipsing the MG ZS EV. These are mainly BEV sedans and SUVs. Things will really hot up when we get electric utes with V2x.
The number of public chargers has doubled in the last 2 years. Currently, across Australia, there are 7.21 electric vehicles for every installed public charger. At the moment, it would be difficult to make a business case for more chargers, but it’s a chicken-and-egg question. Hopefully if you build them, the drivers will come.
Both Hyundai and Volkswagen have been quoted as saying that there needs to be a better regulatory framework in place in Australia (seems like a request for subsidies to me). Some manufacturers are holding back on bringing in their EVs. Some fear that the country will become a dumping ground for obsolete technology. The lack of a federal policy and (until now) state subsidies hasn’t stopped Tesla. As a result, 75% of EVs sold in Australia are Teslas and BEV sales out number PHEVs by a ratio of 6 to 1. (We need to give a passing mention to Toyota — its mild hybrids are selling at the rate of 6000 per month.) Aussies might leapfrog the PHEV transition and move straight to Norway-like numbers with EVs.
In fact, coming soon is the anomaly of Teslas being cheaper than Kia and Hyundai vehicles, thanks to recent price cuts from Tesla and better (and therefore more expensive) vehicles from the South Koreans. Things are getting very exciting in the land down under!
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