Potential for electric vehicle adoption in Australia

Abstract

Data from the New South Wales (NSW) Household Travel Survey (2014/15) was analyzed to determine the trip-by-trip range of automobile travel in NSW. The results show that 88% of trips were less than 30 km, which could readily be provided by electric vehicles, consuming a total of 18 GWh in electrical energy per weekday. Even if all electric vehicles were recharged from non-renewable coal-fired power plants, the greater efficiency of electric vehicles would result in a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions across NSW by 18% carbon dioxide equivalent (CO_2(eq))_. Additionally, we mapped the average state of charge distribution of the electric vehicles at key times during the day, indicating the maximum net load (for recharging) and/or available energy (for vehicle-to-grid services) across NSW. The results are consistent with other international studies and demonstrate the potential for wide scale electric vehicles adoption in Australia.

Keywords:

• Electric vehicles
• range anxiety
• adoption potential
• vehicle to grid
• emissions
• commute

Acknowledgements

We thank Transport Performance and Analytics, Transport for NSW, for providing NSW Household Travel Survey (HTS) 2014/15 (NSW, 2014/15) data for comprehensive analysis.