I've been meaning to show a chart of EV sales in Australia for a while. But I couldn't find timely data. Now, The Driven is publishing monthly EV sales data, but just for this year, so far. I've cobbled together monthly data for 2023 and 2022 and part of 2021, and before that I've used annual data.
Sales have risen from 10 a month at the beginning of 2012 to 10,000 a month in May 2024, an increase of two orders of magnitude in 12 years. As it has been in other markets, that is a 50% annual rate of growth. At that growth rate, even backward Australia will reach new sales EV saturation in 6 years.
True, there are incentives to buy EVs introduced over the last couple of years, and this will have lifted sales. But those incentives won't go away for a while. And meanwhile, battery costs have halved this year, and will halve again over the next 12 to 18 months; EV prices are going to continue to decline. The charging network is growing every month. More and more people are becoming familiar with EVs. Sales are just going to continue to grow, fast.
Cars and light trucks cause 11% of Oz's emissions, and at current growth rates they will become the biggest contributor to total emissions by 2030. EVs will be key to preventing that.
The government is also pursuing "vehicle-to-grid/vehicle-to-house" (V2G/V2H) operations, which will allow EVs to help charge the grid when demand is high. (Obviously, that will be done using price incentives rather than compulsion.) An average EV has 60 kWh battery storage, and even if just 10% of that is used, it will still be enough to power your house overnight. Our very high penetration of rooftop solar will make this option attractive to householders. Your car will also be your house's battery.
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