Australia’s Golden Age Of Evs Won’t Last Forever: Opinion

Bemoan it or begrudge it as much as you want, but electric vehicles (EVs) have hit the mainstream, becoming a viable, popular, and highly sought-after powertrain technology after what seems like a decade of promises and false starts.

Sure, it might have taken skyrocketing fuel prices, a surplus of Chinese models that aren’t being sold on their home soil, government incentives, plateauing petrol and diesel technologies, or a combination of it all, to get us there, but here we are.

EVs outsold pure petrol-powered vehicles for the third consecutive month, and that popularity shows little to no signs of abating.

In fact, pundits have said this is a level of demand they did not predict until the end of the decade, ostensibly accelerating the EV adoption curve by a good three or four years.

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So, what’s next? Now that we have adopted and accepted EVs, it only gets better from here, right?

Nope, I don’t think it will.

In fact, I think we are living in the golden age of EVs here and now, with each successive year that passes, EV adoption will start to slow as the market does what the market does.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

Price has always been cited as a big barrier to entry when it comes to EVs.

When the Nissan Leaf – Australia’s first mainstream all-electric model – launched in 2012, it was priced at $51,500 plus on-road costs at the time.

A similarly sized Toyota Corolla with a petrol engine? It was less than half the price, starting from as low as $19,990 before on-road costs.

Now, the cheapest new car in Australia is an electric model in the form of the BYD Atto 1 at $19,990 drive-away.

But there’s a caveat there. That’s not the car’s full-time price; that is a promotion that will end at some point – which BYD Australia is yet to clarify.

So, the price of the Atto 1 will eventually go up, maybe back to its $23,990 before on-road costs standard pricing, but there’s already an updated and upgraded version of that model available overseas.

You see where I’m going with this?

BYD will justify the inevitable price increase for the Atto 1 with a playbook that every car manufacturer sticks to.

Perhaps that it now has five seats instead of four, or because the battery chemistry is better, or it has faster charging, or a more powerful electric motor, or there is more safety equipment now, or whatever else they can hang the increase on.

And mark my words, this will happen with all Chinese EVs – whether it’s the affordable options from Geely or the more upmarket Zeekrs.

The technology is updating so quickly that changes to some of these cars are being rolled out annually, but progress comes at a cost, and that cost will be passed on to you, the customer.

What I am predicting is that cheap EVs will never be this cheap again; we will start to see prices creep, and as prices rise, interest and sales will fall to balance that out.

Another way to look at it is that car companies will get greedy – and so they should, they are a business after all, literally built from the ground up to make money and not any other altruistic metric.

We’ve seen this happen before already, in the light hatchback segment that only a decade ago fielded models as cheap as $15,000.

What happened in the years since was that more equipment was added – specifically in the active safety space such as autonomous emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, and traffic sign recognition – which saw prices creep up and up and up.

Most of the models left in the light hatchback segment now start at close to $30,000, almost doubling in price in just 10 years.

For reference, the RBA’s inflation calculator puts $15,000 in 2016 at slightly more than $19,600 in 2025 (the most recent year recorded) – so this is not purely an inflationary effect.

But it’s not just prices that will change, owning an electric vehicle will also become much, much more annoying.

So far this year, more than 200,000 new EVs have sold in Australia, but how many public chargers were installed in that time?

As reported by Drive in October 2026, the Electric Vehicle Council’s 2026 State of EVs report showed there were 11,602 public charging points in Australia across 4268 locations total as of June this year.

Right now, in my experience, public charging isn’t too bad, with spots available semi-frequently and no one really lining up and waiting for a turn – if the charger works, that is.

And sure, some, if not most, of these new owners would have off-street parking and be able to charge their EVs at home or work, but not everyone has that luxury.

The more EVs sell, the more charging stations Australia will need. And, well, public infrastructure can be a bit slow to roll out, to say the least.

The public charging problem is just going to get worse as we add more and more EVs to the nation’s car parks, but I don’t believe the charging networks will see a rise as quickly as the vehicles themselves.

All of this is to say that now is the perfect time to buy an EV – particularly if you can or will eventually be able to install a home charger.

They are affordable at the moment, and not everyone is vying for a public charger – yet.

As the technology improves and more features are added, prices will just go up. As the number of EVs increase, charging will get annoying.

So, if you are on the fence about an EV, I reckon it’s time to take the plunge before it gets too late.

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