Aussie tourist stunned by EV street detail on holiday: 'It's possible after all'
The city's innovative approach to tackling a common EV issue isn't new – but it shows how far Australia lags behind.
As Australia drives ahead with the transition to electric vehicles, our overseas counterparts are leaving us in the rearview mirror.
That's the lament of one Aussie EV owner who couldn't help but share a common street detail he noticed while holidaying in the UK. Taking to an online EV group for Australia owners, he shared a photo of how lamp posts had been retrofitted to provide charging outlets along London's roads.
"Spoiler alert – EV in cities are possible," he wrote about the nifty charging solution.
And it's certainly not new, the London borough where the photo was taken switched on its first lamp post EV chargers back in 2018, with some being installed in London the year prior. The charging technology, which easily fits inside the lamp post, is developed by a German company and has been proliferating across European cities.
"My boy and I stopped counting the EVs we saw ... Simply too many," the Aussie traveller said.
"Basically every lamppost has a charging port – as seen in pic, residents living in the area can charge and park, even if they don’t have a garage.
"So it’s possible after all. What a surprise huh?
"And with that, a major yet flawed argument against EV uptake in Australia is unceremoniously dismissed," he added.
The city of London has had a number of incentive programs in place and offered benefits to encourage drivers to make the switch to electric, such as exempting EV owners from a congestion charge as well as charing higher emission vehicles to drive in certain zones (some of which are due to end in 2026).
Much like Australia's bigger cities, residents in London face similar issues about the lack of garage space (or off street parking), which makes it trickier to leave your car charging for long periods. However overall, the country has seen a much higher uptake of EVs in recent years.
According to ZapMap which tracks EV sales in the UK, there are currently more than 1.2 million fully electric cars on the country's roads. Comparatively, there are more than 180,000 EVs on Australian roads, according to a tally by the Electric Vehicle Council. Accounting for population, the UK has about three times the EV take-up compared to Australia.
The perception that Australians are anti-EVs, expressed by the Aussie tourist in London, is often borne out in surveys that show many drivers here are at best circumspect about making the change, with some appearing downright hostile to the transition. In fact a rolling poll of Yahoo readers with more than 53,000 responses shows 70 per cent of people say they are simply not interested in making the switch.
Aussie councils and energy providers bringing street charging online
While Australia is behind our European counterparts, similar initiatives are starting to be rolled out in suburbs across the country as private companies and local councils with the help of state governments push to support the EV transition.
For instance, the Northern Beaches Council in Sydney earlier this year began a 12-month trial which will see several power poles on streets turned into charging points while the city's Inner West Council has also secured funding to roll out 136 public kerbside charging points in the next year.
Meanwhile major energy provider Ausgrid wants to retrofit its power poles to boost charging infrastructure along the eastern seaboard, allowing drivers to pull up, plug in and charge.
The company currently supplies more than 1.6 million properties with power across Sydney, the Central Coast and the Hunter. It believes almost 40 per cent of its more than half a million power poles could be fitted with EV charging ports.
Speaking to Yahoo News Australia last month, a spokesperson for Ausgrid said there's only 150 EV charging outlets on its power poles at the moment, but the hope is that will soon change significantly.
"We believe around 190,000 (or 37 per cent) of Ausgrid poles may be suitable for further assessment to have pole-mounted chargers installed," the spokesperson said.
Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.
You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube.
