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Updated July 21, 2026
Electric cars are selling faster in Australia than ever, but the country's public charging network still hasn't caught up. That is the main warning in the Electric Vehicle Council's 10th annual State of EVs report, published as fully electric and plug-in hybrid sales make up one in four new vehicles sold in Australia in the first half of 2026.
The latest report covers the 2025-26 financial year and tracks how buyer behavior, model availability and infrastructure changed. Between January and June 2026, Australians bought 157,957 electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, a 177% jump over the same period in 2025. That works out to roughly one electric or PHEV purchase every 100 seconds.
Those numbers helped push the combined EV and PHEV share of new-car sales to 25.8%, up from 12.1% a year earlier. According to the International Energy Agency, Australia's adoption rate is now in line with the global average.
The EVC says cost-of-living pressure, repeated fuel-price shocks and a much larger model lineup are driving the shift. But it also warns that infrastructure is not developing at the same pace.
By June 2026, Australia had 4,268 public charging locations, a 235% increase from June 2025. The number of individual charge points rose to 11,602, up 175% year on year.
Those are big jumps, yet the EVC argues raw totals hide a fragmented system. The country needs more public investment, but it also needs to study where drivers actually charge and where gaps hurt most. The report's key point: most charging happens where vehicles already park, such as homes, apartment buildings, workplaces, shops, kerbside bays and depots.
That is why the EVC wants a nationally coordinated charging roadmap, not just more fast chargers scattered around. NRMA spokesman Peter Khoury was more blunt in late 2025, telling CarsGuide that Australia had a long way to go and pointing to locations that cannot draw power from outside the main energy grid.
The report calls for policy shifts that go beyond charging hardware. One is a targeted equity-based approach to help lower-income Australians afford EVs and access fuel savings. The EVC estimates a typical driver saves about $3,000 a year on running costs compared with petrol or diesel, maintenance included, and that figure would be even higher after this year's fuel price increases.
The council also wants the federal government to update the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard for models sold after 2029. The NVES, which fines carmakers for high CO2 emissions, needs to be set early because developing a new model takes years. A clear rule would allow automakers to plan for Australia's 2035 emissions-reduction target.
Then there is the road-user charge. The EVC supports a national charge in principle, but says it must not discourage EV uptake. It argues the approach proposed by the New South Wales government, which would start charging from 2027, would slow sales. NSW says the levy is needed because fuel excise revenue is shrinking and all road users should help pay for road maintenance.
Australia's EV choice has improved dramatically. There are now 196 fully electric and plug-in hybrid models on sale, up from 153 in 2025. That range, combined with price pressure, has made EVs accessible to more buyers. This year, the BYD Atto 1 arrived from $19,990 drive-away, becoming Australia's cheapest electric car, with the promotional price valid until December 15, 2026.
The EVC says that with fuel prices still volatile and cost-of-living pressures continuing, it is no surprise EV sales keep climbing. At the same time, it warns drivers have never had greater choice, but that choice means little if charging remains unreliable in the wrong places.
The Australian report has useful signals for the US market. Australia's mix of federal, state and local rules has produced a patchwork charging network, similar to the uneven interstate experience in America. The US has tried to solve that with federal programs such as the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure effort, which funnels billions from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law into highway charging corridors. Even so, rollout delays and local permitting issues show that a coordinated strategy is easier to announce than to execute.
The EVC's call to study real charging behavior before building more stations also echoes a longstanding issue in the US, where charger utilization data varies widely by region. US states can learn from Australia's push to combine equity measures, long-term efficiency standards and a road-use fee debate without strangling the transition.
The bottom line: charging infrastructure is now the bottleneck, even in a market where EV sales have more than doubled in a year. Governments on both sides of the Pacific are still trying to figure out how to build the right network, not just a bigger one.
