Soaring Electricity Prices Push Up EV Charging Fees in Australia

An electric car is seen recharging at an ActewAGL charging station in Canberra, Australia, on March 21, 2022. AAP Image/Lukas Coch

A number of electric vehicle (EV) charging networks in Australia have raised their service prices as surging electricity prices bite.

Recently, Chargefox, the largest EV charging network in the country, announced that it would lift prices for some of its charging stations.

This comes as electricity prices are expected to soar by up to 23.7 percent in some states from July 1.

The company, which boasted a record of providing over 930,000 charging sessions since 2017, said prices at 20 fast-charging stations in New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria would climb from 40 cents (27 U.S. cents) to 45 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh).

The affected locations are Ballina, Karuah, Gundagai, Goulburn, Cooma, Zetland and Sydney in NSW and Euroa, Barnawartha, Airport West, Torquay, Moe, Horsham and Ballarat in Victoria.

“To continue to deliver the best service, we need to factor in recent rises in energy prices,” Chargefox said in a statement.

“That’s why we’re raising the price of charging at some of our 50 kW fast-charging stations.”

However, the company said prices at its 350kW ultra-rapid charging stations, which could charge 400km of range in around 15 minutes, would remain unchanged at 60 cents per kWh.

Chargefox’s announcement follows similar moves from other competitors such as Ampol and Evie Networks.

In February, Evie Networks introduced a similar price increase to Chargefox, while Ampol lifted fees at five charging sites from 60 to 69 cents per kWh.

Experts Say EV Owners Still Have Cost-Saving Advantage

Despite the rise in charging prices, EV experts said it was still cheaper to operate an electric car than an internal combustion vehicle.

Swinburne University’s future urban mobility professor Hussein Dia said the changes in charging prices were not surprising because of soaring electricity costs in Australia.

However, he noted that EV drivers could still save money if they change their charging behaviour.

“Running electric vehicles has always been much cheaper,” Dia said in comments obtained by AAP.

“This might mean we see some behavioural adjustments from drivers. If you’re out and about and you need to top-up, you have no choice, but if people can anticipate their travel and charge overnight at home, they will not be impacted.”

The Tesla electric car charging station in a car park in Sydney, Australia, on April 14, 2015. Ben Rushton/Getty Images

Dia also said the price hikes could encourage more EV owners to recharge their vehicles from solar energy.

An analysis by the Electric Vehicle Council indicated that the cost of operating a petrol vehicle was about 14 cents per kilometre for an average Australian motorist who drove 25,000 kilometres a year. In contrast, it only costs around four cents per kilometre for EVs.

Similarly, Australian Electric Vehicle Association national president Chris Jones said the cost of charging an EV from standard electricity tariffs at home was about a quarter to a third of the cost of filling up a petrol or diesel car.

“So electricity would need to be close to $1 per kWh for it to be comparable to the price of diesel or petrol. And considering the cost of convenience, that’s reasonable,” he told The Epoch Times.

While the president acknowledged the price increases, he said electricity prices were only a very small part of the overall cost of charging infrastructure.

“The vast majority of the costs associated with EV charging are the installation of high powered EV chargers–often costing up to $1 million per site, especially where power supply is weak,” Jones said.

Calls for Standards for EV Battery Recycling

In a related development, EV manufacturers and experts are calling on the government to create a plan for recycling used batteries as more Australians adopt EVs.

Samantha Johnson, managing director of the Australian branch of EV manufacturer Polestar, said recycling batteries was a challenging issue and that her company wanted the government to soon come up with a standardised process to ensure more batteries could be recycled in Australia.

“This is what the government and industry groups are working on at the moment–a certification process or standards that make sure (recycling) does happen,” she said in comments obtained by AAP.

“We can’t just have a loose industry where batteries come back, and it goes into this yard or that yard and can end up in 10 different places.

“There has to be regulation. There have to be standards ... they have to be recirculated back into manufacturing, back into workshops, back into other goods, we have to make sure that does happen.”

Meanwhile, the Battery Stewardship Council CEO Libby Chapman also emphasised the need for standards in EV battery recycling.

The council has worked with several automobile organisations to create a discussion paper on EV battery recycling, which identifies hurdles and solutions to the issue.

“It is important that we prepare early for this,” Chapman said.

“We don’t want to move in the same way that solar panels have where people haven’t taken action early, and we’ve ended up with a fairly serious and large waste problem.

“When we’re thinking about electric vehicle batteries, unlike solar panels, they also have inherent fire risks, and we cannot afford to have stockpiles of them in an uncontrolled manner.”