As the race to electrify vehicles continues to accelerate in Australia, it has never been more important to understand how we can support an equitable transition.
Despite some commentary suggesting a global slowdown of electric vehicle (EV) purchases, sales in Australia continue to grow.
In 2024, plug-in vehicles sales made up roughly eight per cent of total vehicles sales, inching up from 2023’s total of 7.2 per cent. Growth also remains strong internationally, with the International Energy Agency estimating sales reaching 17 million1 by the end of 2024, compared with 14 million for the 12 months to the end of 2023.
EV sales in Australia are still significantly behind other geographies as a proportion of total market share. However, the introduction of new vehicle emissions standards and the launch of a National Electric Vehicle Strategy has shown strong government support to meet with consumers’ increasing demand to go electric.
With the Treasury Laws Amendment (Electric Car Discount) Act 2022 and the Driving the Nation Fund to provide Australia’s first national EV charging network, there is a clear vision to lower emissions and to improve the wellbeing of Australians by making EVs a more affordable and practical choice.
Yet, how consumers currently or will behave in relation to EVs – including purchasing, charging, servicing, battery management, driving patterns and use of energy management technologies – is not entirely clear.
Existing research has largely been conducted in the US and Europe using predominantly descriptive surveys, with less attention on providing in-depth insights about how various personal, socio-cultural and structural factors shape EV-related behaviours, how to achieve behaviour change to drive adoption of EVs, or that focus on social concerns about who may be left behind through this transition.
The result is a lack of understanding about the issues and challenges Australian consumers will face during the EV transition in terms of their lived experience.
Researching these lived experiences will be critical to inform a successful and inclusive EV transition for Australia. This is where innovative research supported by the Reliable, Affordable, Clean Energy (RACE) for 2030 Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) can help.
Innovation through research
The RACE for 2030 CRC is an industry-led research collaborative established in 2020 to drive energy innovation across the supply chain, and deliver improved, lower-cost and lower-emission energy services for end users.
Projects supported by the RACE for 2030 CRC leverage industry funding and work with leading Australian universities and CSIRO to develop innovative research that can catalyse lower energy costs, reduce carbon emissions and improve energy reliability.
RACE plays a core role in Australia’s innovation system, delivering integrated energy and decarbonisation research to enhance whole-of-system planning and the equitable optimisation of Consumer Energy Resources (CER) for all end users.
Since 2023, RACE has been developing new research projects investigating the key role EVs play in the optimisation and decarbonisation of our energy system, and how they may also contribute to how consumers manage their energy needs.
Given EVs are expected to become even more widespread over the next decade and will potentially represent the majority of private passenger vehicle sales in Australia by 2030, there is an urgent need to plan for and optimise the additional capacity these ‘batteries on wheels’ can unlock to support a grid dominated by new and renewable forms of energy.
Through research RACE has supported so far, it has been observed that certainty of policy, coordination of governance, and the development of local capability all contribute significantly towards a successful technological transition. This is similar to what has been observed in the rollout of comparable user-focused technological transitions such as household rooftop solar, which has seen world-leading adoption in Australia.
Through this experience, the Australian energy sector has developed strong capability to support the delivery and coordination of consumer energy resources, which can also provide an excellent foundation for powering the EV transition. It is, however, equally important to note what has not been observed from research to date.
Our research informed understanding of EV consumer behaviour to date is overwhelmingly informed by high-income early adopters of technology, and it is important to recognise that accessibility to the EV transition is far from equitably distributed. More needs to be done to understand the lived experiences, behaviours, and barriers and enablers for transitioning across all end users.2
RACE has recently supported research that will engage directly with these issues and leverage the experience RACE’s partners to bring in behavioural and social sciences expertise and adopt whole-of-systems research approaches to minimise these potential inequities.
Breaking EV barriers
To understand and develop what is required for an equitable transition to EVs, it will be critical to identify and engage with behaviour-change approaches that put Australian consumers at the heart of the EV transition.
As illustrated in Figure 3, such approaches would acknowledge how personal, socio-cultural and structural factors shape EV related behaviours and involve using a combination of interventions at different levels of influence to support change.
Recent Australian consumer sentiment surveys have provided helpful descriptive findings regarding attitudes and intentions towards EVs.
For example, survey research by the Consumer Policy Research Centre (2022) has provided descriptive data on the percentages of Australians that consider upfront cost (49 per cent), range anxiety (34 per cent), lack of access to charging infrastructure (32 per cent), charging time (22 per cent), running costs (25 per cent), difficulties and stress in planning journeys (21per cent), and concerns about performance and reliability (19 per cent) as barriers to EV uptake and use.
A survey study by Loengbudnark et al (2022) identified that purchase costs and safety concerns were barriers to EV adoption in Australia and identified how basic demographic factors such as age, sex, education level and income mediate these consumer perceptions.
Meanwhile, important ethnographic research by Pink et al (2022) showed that ensuring good accessibility to EV charging and parking infrastructure, home charging and battery and roadside assistance services will be important to support the transition. However, this pays less attention to equity issues, priorities for non-EV users and those who are at risk of being left behind, and recommendations for effective behaviour change strategies.
This existing research, although informative, has mainly focused on early adopters and has largely informed technical, engineering and market-led solutions, with less attention paid to developing deep and meaningful behavioural insights or the adoption of behaviour change principles from the behavioural and social sciences (Michie et al 2014; French & Gordon 2020; Carrasco et al 2021) to support a successful EV transition.
This is despite the proven success of behaviour-change approaches in cognate areas such as promoting household energy efficiency (McAndrew et al 2021), as well as across a range of other health and social issues.
Our limited body of existing knowledge leaves significant gaps in understanding how to facilitate a successful and inclusive EV transition in Australia.
There remains a need to develop greater understanding of everyday lived experiences among users and non-EV users that move beyond descriptive survey studies. That process must draw upon in-depth ethnographic research, as well as sophisticated longitudinal survey studies to provide insights about the issues and challenges users will face during the transition to net zero mobilities.
Understanding consumer challenges
A recently commenced project supported by RACE, ‘Australian Consumers at the Heart of the EV Transition’, will aim to explore the issues and challenges that will face all Australian consumers during the EV transition by understanding their lived experience.
The project will focus on all consumer behavioural aspects related to EVs. It will feature in-person, qualitative ethnographic interviews and visual ethnographies with consumers alongside quantitative survey research to tell us not only the what, but the how and why, concerning EV consumer behaviours in Australia.
Outputs, including research insights, policy recommendations and support in the crafting of customer messaging, will be co-designed with consumers and industry to put end users at the heart of the process.
Participation in this research will be balanced across urban and regional areas, and across different socio-economic, geographic and cultural groups on the east and west coasts of Australia.
Knowledge developed during this research will be informed by conversations with everyday Australians in their homes and help us understand what different socio-economic, cultural and geographic factors are at play in consumers experiences in the EV transition.
Supported by several of RACE’s industry and government partners – including Ausgrid, NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water, Energy Policy WA, Schneider Electric – and led by the University of Technology Sydney and University of Canberra, this research will provide critical consumer insights and recommendations for effective policies, behaviour change strategies, and technologies to support uptake and use of EVs.
Insights will also help to guide policy development and implications for federal and state government EV strategies.
As the race to electrify vehicles continues, it has never been more important to understand how we can support an equitable EV transition. Actions taken over the next few years will be fundamental to Australia achieving its national emissions reduction goals and have the potential to create a wide range of benefits for all consumers.
RACE is grateful for the opportunity to support the development of critical research on this topic and looks forward to supporting Australian consumers at the heart of the EV transition.
1. Canalys, Jan 2024 “Global EV market forecasted to reach 17.5 million units with solid growth of 27% in 2024” accessed July 2024 <https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/global-ev-market-2024>
2. EV Owners Demographics and Behaviours 2023, Prepared by Evenergi for Ausgrid, accessed July 2024
3. Jeff French & Ross Gordon (2020) Strategic Social Marketing: For Behaviour & Social Change. London: Sage.
