Motoring

Tue Nov 11

EV ‘charging deserts’ in regional Australia are slowing the shift to clean transport

Written by Hussein Dia, Professor of Transport Technology and Sustainability, Swinburne University of Technology

If you live in a big city, finding a charger for your electric vehicle (EV) isn’t hard. But drive a few hours in any direction and the story changes.

For most regional Australians, the nearest public charger is still a detour, not a stop on the way. And for anyone planning a long road trip, the chargers along the route fade for hundreds of kilometres at a time.

A new interactive EV charging monitor ^[1] I helped develop shows, for the first time, just how uneven the network really is. This map refreshes daily, pulling live information from the Open Charge Map database ^[2] and plotting every public charger in the database across the nation.

When we overlay those chargers with population data ^[3], a clear pattern emerges: we’ve built a strong urban network, but a patchy national one.

Only about a third of Australia’s towns have a charger within 20 kilometres. Zoom in closer ^[4] and the gap widens: more than two-thirds of towns have no charger within 5 kilometres.

Looks good on paper

Nationally, most Australians live close to a charger. By population, about 88% of people are within 5 kilometres of one, 93% within 10 kilometres, and 97% within 20 kilometres.

On paper, coverage looks good. But look at it from the town’s point of view, and the picture flips: most places still lack a charger, even if most people don’t.

It’s a subtle but important distinction. Around 90% of Australia’s urban centres have fewer than 10,000 residents. These are the small regional towns and rural communities that fill the spaces between cities. They account for a small share of the population but a large share of the country’s geography.

Nationwide, Australia now has around 1,250 public charging sites ^[5] offering nearly 3,800 charge ports.

More than half of these are fast chargers (above 50 kilowatts). About a third are medium-speed chargers. The rest are slow chargers typically found at destinations or wall outlets.

That balance might look healthy. But most of the fast sites are concentrated in cities and along the eastern seaboard, leaving vast inland gaps.

Per capita access is even starker: across Australia there are only about one to two chargers for every 10,000 people.

On long regional routes, the gaps are impossible to miss. Between Melbourne and Darwin, for example, there are stretches of highway hundreds of kilometres long without a single fast charger.

These are the real “charging deserts” – areas where geography, cost and low traffic volumes still make investment difficult to justify.

And even when chargers exist in these areas, they can be slow, or offline.

Voluntary and inconsistent reporting

The EV charging monitor draws on open data, and that comes with a big caveat.

Reporting to the Open Charge Map is voluntary. Some operators update their sites frequently. Others don’t. Each charger’s “status” can tell us whether it’s listed as operational, partial, or down, but it doesn’t reveal uptime – how often a charger is available and working.

Internationally, some countries already require major EV charging networks to meet published reliability standards. In the United Kingdom, rapid public charging networks must ^[6] maintain at least 99%^[7] uptime and provide transparency on performance.

In Australia, there’s no national requirement for public reporting of charger uptime. A 98% reliability target ^[8] applies to chargers built with federal funding, but for the rest of the network, reporting remains voluntary and inconsistent. The next step is to make reliability a shared measure – not just a promise from individual companies, but a national benchmark drivers can trust.

How does Australia compare internationally?

Other countries have set clearer rules for how far drivers should be from a fast charger. Across Europe, new regulations require sites at least every 60 kilometres ^[9] along major highways. The United States funds chargers every 50 miles ^[10] (about 80 kilometres) on key corridors.

New Zealand’s public network aims for coverage roughly every 75 kilometres ^[11] for more than 97% of state highways, and a public charger in most towns with more than 2,000 people ^[12].

Against those yardsticks, Australia’s patchy regional network still has long stretches where chargers are hundreds of kilometres apart.

The road ahead

The pattern suggests two separate challenges. First, keep expanding charger coverage in regional areas to make every major route practical for EV travel. Second, lift reliability and reporting standards so drivers can depend on the network once it’s there.

A national backbone is a logical start: a fast-charging site at least every 150 to 200 kilometres along priority corridors, later tightening to every 100 kilometres.

This work is already underway through state programs such as Queensland’s Electric Super Highway ^[13] and New South Wales’ regional charging rollout ^[14]. But there’s still no consistent national standard for uptime, open access, or data reporting.

Regional support will matter too. Many small towns won’t attract private investment until there’s a guaranteed level of demand. Co-funding through state or federal grants can bridge that gap, especially where the local economy depends on tourism.

A single fast charger in a country town can unlock a chain of benefits for local businesses as passers-by “fill up on the way”.

The next frontier isn’t just installing more chargers – it’s installing them where they’ll make the biggest difference to confidence and coverage.