Australia’s EV industry has a problem. It is not selling enough cars

Australian is a country well suited to EV ownership. A high proportion of single family homes that’s have garages and driveways, many of those homes with solar providing cheap ‘fuel’ at times when booming work from home rates mean the cars are parked up to take advantage of it.

We’re also a country that likes to talk big about how much it drives, but only clocks up an average of 33.1km a day, a distance barely enough to trouble a 10A outlet for a couple of hours.

Five years ago we told ourselves there wasn’t enough public charging for people to choose EVs. Private and public investment has built public charging across Australia.

Two years ago we told ourselves we only had to wait for a broader selection of models to be available. We have new EV brands and new EV models going on sale in Australia every month. Last year we told ourselves prices had to come down, they came down.

So what is the problem?

We spend far too much time trying to sell EVs to early adopters, and guess what, they’ve already bought them. Our industry is not working to create new EV consumers, it is not working to get Australians excited about a technology change that will make their lives simpler, cleaner and more pleasant.

Back in 1991 an academic by the name of Geoffrey Moore, in his theory of technology adoption and fusion, identified a chasm between early adopters and the majority of consumers. Successfully crossing this chasm is what all technologies have to do and they have radically change how the product is presented and marketed.

Early adopters are like me, and probably like a lot of the readers of The Driven. The new technology excites us, we like the challenges, the problems to be solved, all in the name of being first, of pioneering.

This is the opposite of what majority consumers want – for majority consumers to adopt a new technology they have to know how its going to make their lives better, and substantially better at that, if they are going to invest their time and money in the transition.

We as an industry are not very good at selling the dream of EVs, practically the first thing any of us tells a prospective EV owner, is ‘hey, let me solve your problems with charging’, to which a prospective own might well respond ‘I didn’t know I was going to have any issues with charging, maybe I’ll buy a petrol car instead’.

We don’t focus on the joy, the simplicity, the fun of owning an EV. If we can’t generate excitement about the big change we want people to make then thy aren’t going to make it.

So what do we need to do? Nielsen reports that in 2024 the Australian Automotive industry spent $676million on marketing. The auto industry are past masters at creating excitement, creating demand for categories that didn’t exist.

When I was a kid in the 80s most car brands had 3 or 4 models – small medium and large saloons  with maybe a hatchback or estate variant (think BMW 3,5,7 or Ford Fiesta, Escort, Sierra, Granada).

No one drove SUVs because they didn’t exist. The auto industry manufactured desire for whole new categories of vehicles, sold the lifestyle, sold the dream. Now 56.9% of sales are SUVs

If the auto industry wants too sell EVs and avoid the penalties under the NVES they have to direct their massive marketing budget, not at selling individual models, not even at selling their brands but selling the dream of electric motoring. Before you can sell anyone an electric car they have to want to buy one, to be excited about the prospect.

If this means innovating how cars are marketed, replacing tired old marketing agencies, connecting with consumers in new ways. This is where the Electric Vehicle Council and FCAI can lead. We need to evolve – bringing brands and money together, not to compete for customers but to create customers in the first place.

Want the latest EV news delivered straight to your inbox? Subscribe to our free daily newsletter