Your street may soon have an EV charger — but it could be blocked

The Australian government has a plan to put about 14,000 electric vehicle (EV) chargers on power poles across the country, starting in 2027. The goal is to help people who live in apartments or busy city streets charge their EVs even if they don't have a private driveway. But experts are worried that most of these chargers won't have parking spots saved just for EVs. That means regular petrol cars could park in front of them and block them from being used.

Electric vehicle drivers already know this problem well. When a petrol car parks in an EV charging spot, drivers call it getting 'ICEd' — ICE stands for internal combustion engine, the kind of engine that burns petrol or diesel. When that happens, EV drivers must search for another charger, and the charging equipment just sits there doing nothing. This wastes both time and money.

Data from Sydney shows just how serious this problem is. In three nearby council areas — Waverley, Woollahra, and Randwick — 90 out of 320 public charging ports have no dedicated EV parking. Those chargers are used only 5 to 10 percent as much as ones with reserved spots. Anthony Weinberg, who manages EV charging for those councils, said his team will no longer install a charger unless it has a dedicated parking space.

The numbers tell a clear story about dedicated versus non-dedicated chargers. A charger on Ocean Street in North Bondi had 988 sessions in one year, while a similar charger without a reserved spot one kilometre away had just 40. Another nearby undedicated charger had only four sessions in 12 months. 'A lot of the dedicated ones are getting between two and three sessions a day, and the undedicated ones are getting a session every two days,' Mr. Weinberg said.

Sydney's Inner West Council found the same pattern in its own data. Its 78 chargers with dedicated parking were used four times more than its 68 chargers without reserved spots. The council's internal report recommended slowly converting non-dedicated spaces into dedicated ones. Other councils across Australia have reported similar results.

The government believes its charging program will cut carbon dioxide emissions by 9.8 million tonnes, valued at $802 million. Officials estimated that each new charger would support about 30 electric vehicles. But analyst Ross de Rango studied undedicated chargers in the Sydney area and found each one supported only about three EVs — roughly ten times fewer than the government predicted. If his findings are right, the program's emissions goals could be seriously overstated.

Experts warn that blocked chargers could actually slow down the switch to EVs instead of speeding it up. When drivers see chargers that are always blocked or sitting idle, they may worry about relying on an EV for everyday travel. Mr. Weinberg said this risks damaging the public support for EVs that has been built up over many years. Mr. de Rango agreed, saying blocked chargers will discourage people from making the switch.

The rules of the program explain why most chargers will likely end up without dedicated parking. Energy network companies — the businesses that own the poles and wires — choose which poles get chargers, and private charging companies can decide whether to use those sites. If private companies say no to a site, the network company must install a charger there anyway. Critics say network companies don't have a strong reason to pick the best spots, because they earn their money back through slightly higher power bills paid by all households, not through how often their chargers are used. Mr. Weinberg estimated that about 90 percent of chargers under the program will end up without dedicated parking, with the first ones planned for March 2027.