Driving and charging an EV in Australia: A real-world analysis

As outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, electric vehicles offer the greatest decarbonisation potential for land transport, in addition to other benefits, including reduced fuel and maintenance costs, improved air quality, reduced noise pollution, and improved national fuel security. Owing to these benefits, governments worldwide are planning and rolling out EV-favourable policies, and major car manufacturers are committing to fully electrifying their offerings over the coming decades. With the number of EVs on the roads expected to increase, it is imperative to understand the effect of EVs on transport and energy systems. While unmanaged charging of EVs could potentially add stress to the electricity grid, managed charging of EVs could be beneficial to the grid in terms of improved demand-supply management and improved integration of renewable energy sources into the grid, as well as offer other ancillary services. To assess the impact of EVs on the electricity grid and their potential use as batteries-on-wheels through smart charging capabilities, decision-makers need to understand how current EV owners drive and charge their vehicles. As such, an emerging area of research focuses on understanding these behaviours. Some studies have used stated preference surveys of non-EV owners or data collected from EV trials to estimate EV driving and charging patterns. Other studies have tried to decipher EV owners' behaviour based on data collected from national surveys or as reported by EV owners. This study aims to fill this gap in the literature by collecting data on real-world driving and charging patterns of 239 EVs across Australia. To this effect, data collection from current EV owners via an application programming interface platform began in November 2021 and is currently live.