A new Electric Vehicle Council research shows Australia is on track to cross the milestone of 100,000 electric vehicles (EVs), with an estimated 83,000 EVs currently on the road.
According to the new research published in the Australian Electric Vehicle Industry Recap 2022, 79% of the 83,000 are battery electric vehicles (BEVs), while 21% are plug-in hybrids (PHEVs). At the start of 2022, just 44,000 EVs were in use.
The latest research also points out that, with 3.8% of all new cars purchased being electric, the number of EVs purchased jumped by 86% in the previous year.
However, Electric Vehicle Council CEO Behyad Jafari cautioned that there was no room for complacency.
“If you think you’re seeing more EVs on the road than you used to, you’re right, but if we want to hit our national emissions targets we won’t make it on this current trajectory,” Jafari said.
According to Jafari, to meet the Australian Government’s emissions target by 2050, Australia needs a fully zero-emissions vehicle fleet by 2050. Jafari stated that to keep track, the country needs to attain 1 million EVs by 2027 and 3 million by 2030.
“We can definitely hit these goals, but not without an ambitious fuel efficiency standard to expand the supply of EVs to Australia. The federal government should introduce this standard this year as a matter of urgency,” Jafari added.
Jafari said Australians are natural early adopters, care about the environment, and don’t want to rely on something other than foreign oil. He stated that there is no reason for Australia to continue to lag behind the rest of the world in EV adoption.
“The enthusiasm is there in abundance, we just need our governments to continue the policy reform that makes it easy to transition away from the exhaust pipe,” Jafari added.
According to the new study, the number of public chargers has climbed from 3,413 in 2021 to 4,943 in 2022. The number of fast chargers has increased from 231 to 365.
