Battery electric vehicle (BEV) sales remain strong across the country, representing 8.3% of all new vehicle sales in June. But there is natural curiosity about which areas have the highest rate of ownership of fully electric vehicles, and this question has generated a few articles in The Driven and in the mainstream media in recent times.
In August last year, TheDriven published an article “Which Australian postcodes have the highest EV uptake?”
In March this year, data from the Electric Vehicle Council led to a lot of media coverage, as the narrative that EVs are only for “inner city elites” was turned on its head, with data from the EVC showing that the number of EVs sold in 2023 in outer metro areas overtook the number sold in inner metro areas.
The Australian Automobile Association also has an EV dashboard which shows a “heat map” of EV registrations by postcode, although that data is increasingly out of date.
While interesting, the problem with all of these reports and analyses is that the data is not normalised to enable a proper and fair comparison between areas. That’s because suburbs and postcode areas vary massively in geographic size, resident population, and the number of vehicles registered. Some are tiny, and some are huge.
The only way to fairly compare areas of vastly different sizes is either on a per-capita or per-registered-vehicle basis.
Declaring an area with 100 EVs the winner over an area that has only 50 EVs tells us nothing if the first area has four times more vehicles registered than the second. In this scenario, the second area has double the rate of EV ownership of the first – and that, surely, is the more relevant and interesting statistic.
To tackle this question, I sourced data from the impressive NSW Roads and Maritime Service (RMS) PowerBI vehicle registration statistics dashboard. NSW is the only jurisdiction in Australia which publishes vehicle registration data in near real-time (updated monthly) and with extremely detailed breakdowns, allowing interested parties to slice-and-dice the data in pretty much any way they wish.
Registration data is also more reliable than sales data, as it reflects actual vehicles registered for use on public roads, covers every type of electric vehicle including conversions, and does not rely on compiling sales data from individual manufacturers.
It also reflects the total vehicle fleet at a given date – the accumulation of all sales over time, minus deletions as cars are written off or transported and re-registered interstate.
The RMS dashboard provides registration data down to the Local Government Area (LGA) level. Similar to postcodes and suburbs, these areas vary massively in size. The highest number of vehicles registered in NSW is in the Central Coast LGA with nearly 280,000, while the lowest is only 996 in the Brewarrina LGA.
The process used to calculate the BEV percentage in each LGA is summarised in the process notes at the end of this article.
The results of where BEVs are most common bear some similarities to previous analyses, but also reveal some important differences.
The first thing immediately apparent when mapping this data is the huge diagonal swathe across western NSW where not a single BEV is registered. 24 of NSW’s 129 LGAs are completely BEV-free according to the RMS database. The largest of these is Moree Plains LGA, which has 10,482 vehicles registered as at 30 June 2024, but not one of them is battery electric.
Unsurprisingly, the highest penetration of BEVs occurs in the Sydney metropolitan area. Ku-ring-gai LGA, in Sydney’s north, tops the list with 3.63% of all vehicles registered being battery electric. This area mixes affluence with relatively low population density, meaning the vast majority of residents have offstreet parking and can charge an EV at home.
Second is Mosman, a wealthy area on Sydney’s lower north shore, with 3.54%. Third is Woollahra with 3.47%, a similarly wealthy area in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, although with a much higher population density than either Ku-ring-gai or Mosman. The top 10 LGAs in NSW are listed below:
Overall Rank | LGA | BEV % |
1 | Ku-ring-gai | 3.63 |
2 | Mosman | 3.54 |
3 | Woollahra | 3.47 |
4 | Willoughby | 3.40 |
5 | Hunters Hill | 3.28 |
6 | Lane Cove | 3.23 |
7 | Unincorporated NSW | 3.20 |
8 | Sydney City | 3.20 |
9 | Waverley | 2.93 |
10 | Ryde | 2.59 |
NSW Overall | 1.05 |
Overall, 8 LGAs in NSW have a BEV penetration over 3%, 13 have a penetration over 2%, and 30 have a penetration over 1%.
The LGA with the highest number of BEVs registered is The Hills Shire with 3648. But it comes in at 12th position on BEV penetration due to its large total number of registered vehicles, highlighting the fatal flaw if simple BEV totals are used to rank areas of different sizes.
The curiosity is “Unincorporated NSW” which comes in at 7th place with 3.20% BEV penetration. This massive area in the far west of the state has so few people so widely dispersed that it does not have its own elected council, and instead is directly administered by the NSW Department of Primary Industries. But Unincorporated NSW also includes Lord Howe Island, 600km east of Port Macquarie.
Unfortunately, the RMS registration dashboard does not split the two. It is likely that the majority of the 38 BEVs registered in Unincorporated NSW (out of 1187 vehicles total) are actually on Lord Howe Island, and not in Tibooburra, Milparinka, or Silverton. Broken Hill LGA, which is surrounded by Unincorporated NSW, has 13 BEVs registered and is ranked 99th overall.
Apart from this, not all areas beyond Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong are an EV desert. Some regional areas have quite high BEV penetration. The top 10 regional areas are listed below:
Regional Rank | LGA | BEV % |
1 | Unincorporated NSW | 3.20 |
2 | Byron | 1.52 |
3 | Queanbeyan-Palerang | 1.17 |
4 | Blue Mountains | 1.13 |
5 | Kiama | 1.09 |
6 | Yass Valley | 1.09 |
7 | Wingecarribee | 0.93 |
8 | Ballina | 0.79 |
9 | Tweed | 0.69 |
10 | Central Coast | 0.67 |
If we look beyond the anomaly that is Unincorporated NSW, second on the list is Byron LGA, home to an eclectic mix of multi-millionaires and alternative lifestylers. It’s also interesting that two of the top 10 regional areas – Queanbeyan-Palerang and Yass Valley – adjoin the Australian Capital Territory, which has Australia’s highest penetration of BEVs on a state- or territory-wide basis.
However, overall the ACT has 2.59% BEV penetration as at June 30 (8,659 BEVs out of 333,762 registered vehicles) which would place it in 10th position on NSW’s LGA list.
If you live in NSW and are interested in how your local area fares, play around with the interactive map below. You can zoom in and out, and if you click on a given LGA, a popup with the BEV statistics for that area will appear.
It would be great if the other States published timely registration statistics in a manner similar to NSW, enabling a comparable nationwide analysis to be done.
Process Notes
BEV penetration calculation process:
- Extract the total number of vehicles registered in each LGA, and subtract the number of registered trailers in each. Trailers have no motive power, hence must be removed from the counts.
- All references in this article to “registered vehicles” excludes trailers.
- This analysis covers all registered vehicles regardless of ADR category – light and heavy vehicles, passenger vehicles, SUVs, goods vehicles, buses etc.
- The “Vehicle Garaged” LGA was used rather than “Customer” LGA, as the location at which the vehicle is garaged is more relevant for this analysis.
- Extract the total number of battery electric vehicles registered in each LGA.
- Divide the total number of battery electric vehicles by the total number of registered vehicles (minus trailers) to obtain the percentage of all vehicles registered in each LGA that are BEV.
Brendan Jones is an electrical engineer, data analyst and passionate advocate for renewable energy and electric vehicles. He likes to use data and research to influence public debate in these areas, and where possible, influence policy decisions via submissions to public consultations and direct engagement with various levels of Government.