Victoria and its capital city, Melbourne, have been revealed as hotspots for Australian electric vehicle adoption – such as it is – with Melbourne topping the list of the nation’s top EV suburbs and Victorian postcodes occupying seven spots out of the top 10.
The table, put together by the Institute for Sensible Transport using the latest ABS Motor Vehicle Census data, provides an indication of how EV ownership varies across Australia, after a year when the country’s fleet grew by 59% in 2020.
The IST provides a table identifying the nation’s top 10 suburbs in Australia for EV ownership (above), as well as the top 10 for each state – and notes that the low numbers overall reflect Australia’s generally low take-up of EVs, at about 0.7% of new vehicles sold.
Nevertheless, it’s worth celebrating those suburbs that are taking a lead, including those that the IST describes as “surprising,” such as Laverton North, where it suggests Toyota’s hydrogen vehicle testing and lending program might have skewed the data.
As noted above, the City of Melbourne, postcode 3000, comes in on top, with 145 registered EVs on its roads, making up a teensy 0.64% of all cars in that postcode.
The South Australia multi-suburb postcode of 5042 comes in at second place, with 127 EVs registered across the southern Adelaide suburbs of Bedford, Clovelly Park, Flinders University, Pasadena, St Mary’s and Tonsley.
The previously mentioned Victorian dark horse, Laverton North, ties in third place with Sydney’s 2000 postcode – including Barangaroo, Dawes Point, Haymarket, Miller’s Point and The Rocks – with 102 EVs each.
The rest of the order is detailed in the table above, with the affluent inner Melbourne suburbs of Hawksburn and Toorak bringing up the rear with 75 EVs in tenth place. All up, South Australia has only the one postcode in the top 10, while NSW has two. Nothing at all from Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania or the ACT.
According to the state-by-state top 10 charts, Queensland’s leading EV postcode 4217, which takes in Surfers Paradise, Main Beach and Bundall, EVs make up just 0.21% of all cars registered, a grand total of 59.
Western Australia lags even further behind with just 42 EVs registered in its so-called hotspot postcode of 6009, which takes in the inner-Perth suburbs of Broadway Nedlands, Crawley, Dalkeith and Nedlands. That’s one EV fewer than Tasmania’s top postcode, 7000, which has 43 registered.
The IST has also used the data to make an easy-to-use interactive map, which shows how EV ownership has changed over recent years. Check it out here.
Sophie is editor of One Step Off The Grid and deputy editor of its sister site, Renew Economy. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.