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The Australian states with the most – and fewest – electric car charging points

NSW is officially the state with the largest number of public electric car charging points in Aus – but it has room to improve if it's going to continue servicing the growing number of electric cars on its roads.


A new study from insurance company Budget Direct has broken down the number of DC fast-charging and AC charging points in each state, ranking them based on how many sites there are per electric vehicles on the roads.

While NSW boasts 153 DC chargers and 630 AC chargers for a combined total of 783 charging points, there are roughly 4627 electric cars in the state – meaning there's only 0.17 charging stations per electric car.

Meanwhile, the state with the highest proportion of chargers per electric car is the Northern Territory with 0.43 – but that's because there are only 30 registered electric cars in the Northern Territory, with a total of 13 AC chargers available.

The state most under-servicing its electric car population is the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) with just 0.10 chargers per electric car, given it has the highest rate of EV sales of any state (83 EVs per 10,000 new car sales). That's only one charger per every 10 electric cars.

Still, Australia's provision of chargers is improving across the board, with a 40 per cent increase in the number of public chargers nationwide over the last 12 months.

Budget Direct's study also examined the viability of 15 of the country's most iconic road trips, based on electric vehicle range and accessibility of charging points, and found only nine of the famous routes were feasible in an electric car with a range of 480km.

The study found the longest road trip that can currently be completed in an electric car is the Nullarbor drive from Kalgoorlie in Western Australia to the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia, measuring 1746km and taking eight hours, but with eight charging points along the way (all within 3.2km of the usual route).

Other iconic drives able to be completed in an electric car using public charging included the Great Ocean Road, the Great Alpine Road and the Grand Pacific Drive.

STATE/TERRITORYDC CHARGERSAC CHARGERSTOTAL CHARGERSELECTRIC VEHICLESCHARGERS PER ELECTRIC VEHICLE
Australian Capital Territory1139505230.10
South Australia1921623517870.13
Victoria8645053641930.13
Queensland5933639524160.16
New South Wales15363078346270.17
Western Australia252022279560.24
Tasmania464681950.35
Northern Territory01313300.43
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Susannah Guthrie

Susannah Guthrie has been a journalist for over a decade, covering everything from world news to fashion, entertainment, health and now cars. Having previously worked across titles like The New Daily, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, People Magazine and Cosmopolitan, Susannah now relishes testing family cars with the help of her husband and two-year-old son.

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