Battery electrical automobile (BEV) gross sales stay sturdy throughout the nation, representing 8.3% of all new automobile gross sales in June. However there’s pure curiosity about which areas have the very best fee of possession of absolutely electrical automobiles, and this query has generated a number of articles in The Pushed and within the mainstream media in current occasions.
In August final 12 months, TheDriven revealed an article “Which Australian postcodes have the very best EV uptake?”
In March this 12 months, knowledge from the Electrical Car Council led to numerous media protection, because the narrative that EVs are just for “internal metropolis elites” was turned on its head, with knowledge from the EVC displaying that the variety of EVs offered in 2023 in outer metro areas overtook the quantity offered in internal metro areas.
The Australian Vehicle Affiliation additionally has an EV dashboard which reveals a “warmth map” of EV registrations by postcode, though that knowledge is more and more outdated.
Whereas fascinating, the issue with all of those reviews and analyses is that the info shouldn’t be normalised to allow a correct and honest comparability between areas. That’s as a result of suburbs and postcode areas fluctuate massively in geographic measurement, resident inhabitants, and the variety of automobiles registered. Some are tiny, and a few are enormous.
The one method to pretty evaluate areas of vastly totally different sizes is both on a per-capita or per-registered-vehicle foundation.
Declaring an space with 100 EVs the winner over an space that has solely 50 EVs tells us nothing if the primary space has 4 occasions extra automobiles registered than the second. On this state of affairs, the second space has double the speed of EV possession of the primary – and that, certainly, is the extra related and fascinating statistic.
To deal with this query, I sourced knowledge from the spectacular NSW Roads and Maritime Service (RMS) PowerBI automobile registration statistics dashboard. NSW is the one jurisdiction in Australia which publishes automobile registration knowledge in close to real-time (up to date month-to-month) and with extraordinarily detailed breakdowns, permitting events to slice-and-dice the info in just about any means they want.
Registration knowledge can also be extra dependable than gross sales knowledge, because it displays precise automobiles registered to be used on public roads, covers each kind of electrical automobile together with conversions, and doesn’t depend on compiling gross sales knowledge from particular person producers.
It additionally displays the overall automobile fleet at a given date – the buildup of all gross sales over time, minus deletions as vehicles are written off or transported and re-registered interstate.
The RMS dashboard gives registration knowledge right down to the Native Authorities Space (LGA) degree. Much like postcodes and suburbs, these areas fluctuate massively in measurement. The very best variety of automobiles registered in NSW is within the Central Coast LGA with almost 280,000, whereas the bottom is barely 996 within the Brewarrina LGA.
The method used to calculate the BEV proportion in every LGA is summarised within the course of notes on the finish of this text.
The outcomes of the place BEVs are most typical bear some similarities to earlier analyses, but in addition reveal some necessary variations.
The very first thing instantly obvious when mapping this knowledge is the large diagonal swathe throughout western NSW the place not a single BEV is registered. 24 of NSW’s 129 LGAs are fully BEV-free in keeping with the RMS database. The most important of those is Moree Plains LGA, which has 10,482 automobiles registered as at 30 June 2024, however not considered one of them is battery electrical.
Unsurprisingly, the very best penetration of BEVs happens within the Sydney metropolitan space. Ku-ring-gai LGA, in Sydney’s north, tops the listing with 3.63% of all automobiles registered being battery electrical. This space mixes affluence with comparatively low inhabitants density, which means the overwhelming majority of residents have offstreet parking and may cost an EV at house.
Second is Mosman, a rich space on Sydney’s decrease north shore, with 3.54%. Third is Woollahra with 3.47%, a equally rich space in Sydney’s jap suburbs, though with a a lot larger inhabitants density than both Ku-ring-gai or Mosman. The highest 10 LGAs in NSW are listed beneath:
Total Rank
LGA
BEV %
1
Ku-ring-gai
3.63
2
Mosman
3.54
3
Woollahra
3.47
4
Willoughby
3.40
5
Hunters Hill
3.28
6
Lane Cove
3.23
7
Unincorporated NSW
3.20
8
Sydney Metropolis
3.20
9
Waverley
2.93
10
Ryde
2.59
NSW Total
1.05
Total, 8 LGAs in NSW have a BEV penetration over 3%, 13 have a penetration over 2%, and 30 have a penetration over 1%.
The LGA with the very best variety of BEVs registered is The Hills Shire with 3648. However it is available in at twelfth place on BEV penetration attributable to its massive whole variety of registered automobiles, highlighting the deadly flaw if easy BEV totals are used to rank areas of various sizes.
The curiosity is “Unincorporated NSW” which is available in at seventh place with 3.20% BEV penetration. This large space within the far west of the state has so few individuals so extensively dispersed that it doesn’t have its personal elected council, and as a substitute is straight administered by the NSW Division of Major Industries. However Unincorporated NSW additionally consists of Lord Howe Island, 600km east of Port Macquarie.
Sadly, the RMS registration dashboard doesn’t break up the 2. It’s doubtless that almost all of the 38 BEVs registered in Unincorporated NSW (out of 1187 automobiles whole) are literally on Lord Howe Island, and never in Tibooburra, Milparinka, or Silverton. Damaged Hill LGA, which is surrounded by Unincorporated NSW, has 13 BEVs registered and is ranked 99th total.
Other than this, not all areas past Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong are an EV desert. Some regional areas have fairly excessive BEV penetration. The highest 10 regional areas are listed beneath:
Regional Rank
LGA
BEV %
1
Unincorporated NSW
3.20
2
Byron
1.52
3
Queanbeyan-Palerang
1.17
4
Blue Mountains
1.13
5
Kiama
1.09
6
Yass Valley
1.09
7
Wingecarribee
0.93
8
Ballina
0.79
9
Tweed
0.69
10
Central Coast
0.67
If we glance past the anomaly that’s Unincorporated NSW, second on the listing is Byron LGA, house to an eclectic mixture of multi-millionaires and different lifestylers. It’s additionally fascinating that two of the highest 10 regional areas – Queanbeyan-Palerang and Yass Valley – adjoin the Australian Capital Territory, which has Australia’s highest penetration of BEVs on a state- or territory-wide foundation.
Nonetheless, total the ACT has 2.59% BEV penetration as at June 30 (8,659 BEVs out of 333,762 registered automobiles) which might place it in tenth place on NSW’s LGA listing.
In the event you reside in NSW and are serious about how your native space fares, mess around with the interactive map beneath. You possibly can zoom out and in, and should you click on on a given LGA, a popup with the BEV statistics for that space will seem.
It could be nice if the opposite States revealed well timed registration statistics in a fashion much like NSW, enabling a comparable nationwide evaluation to be accomplished.
Course of Notes
BEV penetration calculation course of:
Extract the overall variety of automobiles registered in every LGA, and subtract the variety of registered trailers in every. Trailers don’t have any motive energy, therefore have to be faraway from the counts.
All references on this article to “registered automobiles” excludes trailers.
This evaluation covers all registered automobiles no matter ADR class – mild and heavy automobiles, passenger automobiles, SUVs, items automobiles, buses and many others.
The “Car Garaged” LGA was used quite than “Buyer” LGA, as the situation at which the automobile is garaged is extra related for this evaluation.
Extract the overall variety of battery electrical automobiles registered in every LGA.
Divide the overall variety of battery electrical automobiles by the overall variety of registered automobiles (minus trailers) to acquire the share of all automobiles registered in every LGA which can be BEV.
Brendan Jones is {an electrical} engineer, knowledge analyst and passionate advocate for renewable power and electrical automobiles. He likes to make use of knowledge and analysis to affect public debate in these areas, and the place attainable, affect coverage selections by way of submissions to public consultations and direct engagement with varied ranges of Authorities.