Home Property Australia What does the EV boom mean for the property sector?

What does the EV boom mean for the property sector?

  • July 26, 2023
  • by Property Australia
Electric Vehicle Council Head of Energy and Infrastructure Ross De Rango

Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) are roughly doubling year on year as Australians increasingly look electric for their latest car and the property industry will feel its impacts.

Electric Vehicle Council Head of Energy and Infrastructure Ross De Rango said demand was outstripping the supply of EVs.

“Every EV that is going to be allocated to the Australian market is finding a buyer easily, the challenge for uptake and the numbers of vehicles on the road isn’t an absence of demand, it is just supply,” Mr De Rango, who is appearing at a Property Council WA event next month, said.

“Fuel efficiency standards are the big thing that 85 per cent of the global automotive market is subject to that drives the allocation of fuel efficient vehicles and battery electric vehicles, primarily to those markets that have those standards in place.

“In the OECD, it’s just us and Russia that don’t have fuel efficiency standards in place for light vehicles.”

Mr De Rango said the Australian Government is currently looking at introducing a fuel efficiency standard to bring us closer to the rest of the world, noting there needs to be a carrot and stick approach to incentives and regulation.

A recent report from CBRE laid out how ready the property industry is for the boom in EVs.

Retail properties have taken the lead in EV charging station availability, with a penetration rate of 78 per cent, while office buildings lag behind at just 20 per cent, according to the report.

Among the surveyed cities, Perth boasts the highest penetration rate of charging stations in office buildings, with approximately 35 per cent of the office buildings equipped with charging stations, and the city accounted for 43 per cent of all charging stations across the four cities.

At a retail level, 31 of the 40 centres that CBRE surveyed nationally had EV chargers with Perth again leading the way, with a 100 per cent penetration rate. By contrast, Melbourne’s retail centres are relatively undersupplied with only 40 per cent containing chargers.

Mr De Rango said we are moving from a model where refuelling is not typically done in the built environment, to one where if a building has a car parking bay it may become a location where EV charging can happen.

“Any building that is a residence is a place where people will expect to be able to charge their cars and workplaces will do an awful lot of EV charging as well,” he said.

“If I think about a shopping center with hundreds and hundreds of car parking bays, it’s not likely to be necessary to electrify all of them, it’s more about identifying what it is that the drivers need when they’re in that location, and then meeting that need.”

Mr De Rango said from a residential perspective, those in a standalone home have a relatively easy pathway to installing an EV charger, but it gets more complicated for those in apartment developments.

“A person in an apartment complex, if the place hasn’t been built ready for the installation of EV charging, the owners can be facing an uphill battle to get the charging equipment installed because of the retrofitting work required,” he said.

Mr De Rango encouraged developers to be aware of upcoming requirements in the National Construction Code to build EV ready and advocated for going a step beyond and build future ready structures.

Mr De Rango will be joining Antonia Trumbull from Schneider Electric Buildings and Steve Edwell from the Economic Regulation Authority on a penal moderated by BGIS’ Beth Moris for a Property Council WA lunch uncovering the strategies you need to stay ahead in the electrification of buildings.