Last updated: 8 September 2026 · Written by Alex Arnautovic, Solar Accreditation Australia Designer and Installer · Licensed Electrician
The cost to charge an electric car depends almost entirely on where you plug it in. On a public DC fast charger in Australia it is somewhere between 58 and 73 cents per kWh. Charging the same car at home in Sydney costs 7 cents on an overnight EV tariff, 3.4 to 6.5 cents from your own rooftop solar, and — since 1 July 2026 — nothing at all for the first 24 kWh a day if you charge between 11am and 2pm on the new Solar Sharer Offer. Over an average year that spread is worth more than $1,100. And the cost is only half the argument. The other half is that Australia’s public charging network is now being built faster than it is being maintained.
Key takeaways
- Battery electric vehicles went from 8.4% of new car sales in January 2026 to 23.4% by July — the network was not designed for that many drivers
- Charging networks report 95–98% “uptime”, but uptime only measures whether a charger is talking to the network, not whether you can charge from it
- The Solar Sharer Offer gives NSW households with a smart meter three free hours of electricity a day, 11am to 2pm, capped at 24 kWh — enough to fully charge most EVs
- On an overnight EV plan you pay around 7c/kWh against up to 73c on an ultra-rapid public charger — roughly ten times more for the same kilowatt-hour
- Petrol in Sydney is 206.5c a litre, about $1,999 a year over an average 12,100 km — even charging exclusively on public fast chargers beats that by roughly $740
- Public charging still wins for road trips and for anyone without off-street parking — this is not an argument that it should not exist
What changed this year
Australia’s EV market did not grow. It jumped.
In the first half of 2026 sales of battery electric vehicles nearly tripled. They made up 8.4% of the new car market in January and 23.4% by July. In July alone more than 108,000 new vehicles were sold in Australia and more than one in five was a battery EV. Tesla and Polestar delivered four times as many cars as the year before; BYD was up 70.5% year on year.
Those figures come from Kai Li Lim, St Baker Fellow in E-Mobility at the University of Queensland and the University of Western Australia, and Scott Dwyer, Research Director for Energy Futures at the University of Technology Sydney, writing on 24 August 2026. The Electric Vehicle Council reaches the same conclusion from the ownership side: most electric cars in Australia are charged at home, at depots or at workplaces rather than on the public network.
Charging infrastructure is being built quickly too. Coles and Evie Networks are installing 200 kW chargers at 30 supermarkets. Ampol has deployed 400 kW ultra-fast units. BP opened a 24-bay hub at Melbourne Airport and has built about 300 sites nationally since 2022. The NRMA received $40 million in federal funding to build 35 new highway sites.
The problem is not the building. It is what happens to a charger in year three.
“Uptime” is not the same as being able to charge
Here is the number that should change how you plan your charging.
Charging networks report roughly 95 to 98% uptime. In a study of government-funded DC fast chargers, the probability that a driver could actually complete a charging session was 75 to 83%.
That study — co-authored by the same Kai Li Lim with Tisura Gamage of the University of California, Davis, and published on 15 October 2025 — analysed chargers funded by the Californian government, not Australian ones. We are flagging that deliberately, because no equivalent public dataset exists for Australia. Nobody publishes how often an Australian public charger actually works when a driver pulls up to it. The Australian Government’s own standard asks for 98% uptime on chargers it funds, and that metric measures whether the unit is connected to the network — not whether you got charged.
The gap between those two numbers is made of ordinary, unglamorous failures:
- Blocked bays — a petrol car parked in the charging station’s bay
- Failed handshakes — the car and the charger cannot agree on a session and simply stop
- Payment failures — the terminal will not take the card or the app will not authorise
- Vandalised cables
- Communication faults between vehicle and charger
Every one of those leaves the charging station “online” in the operator’s dashboard. None of them gets your car charged.
When a charger breaks, who fixes it?
Often, nobody obvious.
Chargefox is Australia’s largest charging network and owns very little of the hardware it lists. It aggregates chargers belonging to other networks, councils, businesses and energy companies into a single app. For a driver that is convenient. When a unit fails, it means the brand on the app is not the party responsible for the repair, and it is not always clear who is. Chargefox carries 83% of Tasmania’s public charging stations and 58% of Western Australia’s, so a single operator having a bad month becomes a state-wide outage.
Maintenance also lands on parties who never planned for it. In 2025 the Royal Automobile Club of WA wound down its decade-old Electric Highway and handed 16 charging stations to local councils. Several councils decommissioned broken units rather than repair them. Others removed the public charging station entirely, leaving holes in the network.
Lim and Dwyer’s recommendation is straightforward: extend the minimum operating standard from taxpayer-funded charging stations to privately funded ones, tie funding to performance rather than to installation, and require operators to disclose real failure rates. Until that happens, the only charging point whose reliability you control is the one on your own wall.
The free three hours most Sydney EV owners have not heard about
On 4 November 2025 the Australian Government announced a new tariff category under the Default Market Offer framework: the Solar Sharer Offer. It has been rolling out across DMO regions since 1 July 2026, and almost nobody in the EV conversation is talking about it.
The deal, as set by the Australian Energy Regulator in its DMO 2026–27 final determination:
- Three hours of free electricity every day
- In all NSW distribution regions — Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy and Essential Energy — the free window is 11am to 2pm, fixed local time, no seasonal variation
- A reasonable use cap of 24 kWh applies. Usage above 24 kWh inside the window is charged at the off-peak rate, not at a penalty rate
- It is opt-in and requires a smart meter
Twenty-four kilowatt-hours is not a token amount. It is a full charge for most electric cars sold in Australia, every single day, for nothing. EV batteries in that class hold 50 to 75 kWh, so the free window covers a third to a half of a pack each day. At the real-world consumption figures below, 24 kWh is roughly 130 to 170 km of driving.
There is a genuine trade-off, and the AER is explicit about it: the cost of the free window is reallocated across every other period of the day. You are not getting free electricity so much as moving when you pay for it. If your car sits at a workplace car park between 11am and 2pm, the offer does nothing for you and the rest of your day costs more. If your car is home during the day — retirees, shift workers, hybrid workers, second cars — it is the cheapest charging available in New South Wales, full stop.
Worth asking your retailer directly whether they have it live on your network.
The cost comparison, in cents per kilowatt-hour
| Where you charge | Cost per kWh | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Solar Sharer free window, 11am–2pm, first 24 kWh/day | 0c | AER DMO 2026–27 |
| Your own rooftop solar | 3.4 – 6.5c | IPART 2026–27 feed-in benchmark |
| Overnight EV tariff | 7 – 8c | EnergyAustralia 7c; AGL 8c |
| Standard flat rate, Ausgrid | 33.1c | AER DMO 2026–27 tariff cap |
| Public DC fast charging | 58 – 73c | Evie network schedule |
Four of these need explaining.
Why solar counts as 3.4 to 6.5 cents. A kilowatt-hour from your own roof is not free, but it is close. Its true cost is what you would have been paid for exporting it instead — and NSW feed-in tariffs have collapsed. IPART’s benchmark range for 2026–27 is 3.4 to 6.5 cents per kWh, down from 4.8 to 7.3 the year before. AGL now publishes a 3 cent feed-in tariff. Exporting midday solar is close to worthless, which is exactly what makes putting it into a car battery so attractive.
Why the overnight rate is so low. NSW retailers have built tariffs specifically to move EV charging into the small hours, when the grid has spare capacity. EnergyAustralia’s EV Night Boost charges 7c/kWh between midnight and 6am, NSW only, Ausgrid network, smart meter and an actual EV required. AGL’s Night Saver EV charges 8c/kWh between 12am and 6am and — worth knowing — does not require a dedicated EV charger, only a digital meter. Both sit on top of your normal rates for the rest of the day.
What the 33.1 cents is. That is the Default Market Offer cap: the maximum a retailer may charge an Ausgrid residential customer on a flat rate in 2026–27, set by the AER at 33.1372 c/kWh including GST. Endeavour Energy’s cap is 33.7273c. It is the number to use if you charge whenever you feel like it and have never looked at your plan.
Where the public charging range comes from. Australian networks no longer publish a single national rate — Evie’s own help page tells customers to check the app, because pricing now varies by site and by connector. The last network-wide schedule Evie published, effective 18 January 2024, was 50c/kWh on 22 kW AC, 58c on 50 kW, 68c on 150 kW and 73c on 350 kW ultra-rapid. Prices have not gone backwards since. Treat 58 to 73 cents as the DC fast-charging band and check the app before you plug in.
What that means over a year
Two inputs. Australians drive about 12,100 km a year (ABS Survey of Motor Vehicle Use, the final release of that series). And real-world consumption sits at 14 to 18 kWh per 100 km: the Australian Automobile Association’s Real-World Testing Program, which drives a 93 km route around Geelong rather than relying on lab figures, measured the Tesla Model 3 RWD at 14.0, the Tesla Model Y Long Range at 16.7, the Kia EV6 Air at 16.6, the Smart #3 at 17.0 and the BYD Atto 3 Extended Range at 18.0 kWh/100 km.
Take the midpoint, 16 kWh/100 km. That is roughly 1,940 kWh of charging a year.
| How you charge | Cost per kWh | Cost per year |
|---|---|---|
| Solar Sharer free window | 0c | $0 |
| Own solar, daytime | 5c | ~$97 |
| Overnight EV tariff | 7c | ~$136 |
| Standard flat rate (DMO cap) | 33.1c | ~$642 |
| Public DC fast charging | 65c | ~$1,258 |
A driver who relies on public fast charging is spending roughly $1,123 a year more than one charging overnight at home, and about $1,162 more than one charging off their own roof.
One honest caveat, because it matters. A wall charger does not by itself make your electricity cheaper. The tariff does that, and you can get an overnight rate while trickling from a 10 amp socket — AGL confirms its EV plan does not require a dedicated charger. What home charging on a wall unit buys you is the ability to actually use those windows. A 7.2 kW single-phase unit adds roughly ten times as much range per hour as a power point, which is the difference between filling the car inside a six-hour off-peak block or a three-hour free window and merely topping it up. It also gives you smart charging, and a fixed, weatherproof, RCD-protected circuit instead of an extension lead. If you are currently charging on public DC and switch to home charging on an EV tariff, the installation typically pays for itself inside the first year.
Petrol versus the cost of charging
The NRMA’s weekly fuel report put the average price of regular unleaded in Sydney at 206.5 cents per litre on Monday 7 September 2026, with a rise toward 210 expected the following week. A comparable car of the same size as the electric cars above — a small SUV or a mid-size sedan — uses around 8 litres per 100 km in real driving. Over the same 12,100 km that is 968 litres, or about $1,999 a year.
| Fuel | Cost per 100 km | Cost per year |
|---|---|---|
| Unleaded at 206.5c a litre | $16.52 | ~$1,999 |
| Public DC fast charging | $10.40 | ~$1,258 |
| Standard flat rate at home | $5.30 | ~$642 |
| Overnight EV tariff | $1.12 | ~$136 |
| Solar Sharer free window | $0 | $0 |
Here is the part that gets lost in the argument. Even the worst way to charge an electric car — relying entirely on public fast charging, at the top of the range, every time — still costs about $740 a year less than petrol. And charging at home overnight is not “a bit cheaper”. It is roughly one fifteenth of the cost.
That gap is why the average cost of running an EV survives even a bad tariff. It is also why the reliability question below matters more than the price question: the money is already won.
How long it takes to charge your EV
Charging time comes down to two things — the size of the battery and the charge rate your connection can actually deliver. At the 16 kWh/100 km used above:
| How you charge | Power | Range added per hour |
|---|---|---|
| 10 amp power point | ~2.0 kW | ~13 km |
| Single-phase wall charger | 7.2 kW | ~45 km |
| Three-phase wall charger | 11 kW | ~69 km |
| Three-phase wall charger | 22 kW | ~138 km |
| Public DC fast charge | 50 kW | ~310 km |
AC charge rates assume the car accepts them; many electric cars cap their onboard charger below 11 kW, so a 22 kW circuit does not always deliver 22 kW. DC charging bypasses the onboard charger entirely, which is why a fast charger is so much quicker — and why it costs what it costs.
Two consequences for a Sydney household, and both are about the cheap windows rather than about speed for its own sake.
A power point cannot use them. At about 2.0 kW, adding 300 km takes roughly 24 hours of continuous charging. You will never fit a useful charge inside a six-hour off-peak block, so you end up charging your EV at the day rate whether you meant to or not. A 7.2 kW wall charger delivers 43.2 kWh across the midnight-to-6am window — around 270 km a night, which is more than most people drive in a week.
On single-phase you physically cannot exceed the free 24 kWh cap. A 7.2 kW charger running the full three-hour Solar Sharer window delivers 21.6 kWh, which is under the cap. Only a three-phase installation at 11 kW or more — 33 kWh over three hours — runs past it and starts paying the off-peak rate on the remainder. If you are choosing between single-phase and three-phase and the free window is your plan, this is the number that decides it.
Charging from your own solar
Pairing an EV charger with rooftop solar is where the numbers stop being marginal.
A 6.6 kW system on a Sydney roof generates far more at midday than most homes consume, and that surplus is now worth 3 to 6 cents exported. A solar-aware unit — the Zappi is the common choice, and it is one we install — watches your meter and diverts only surplus energy into the car, so you charge on the generation you would otherwise have given away. The Tesla Gen 3 Wall Connector does not do this; it is a fine unit, but it is not solar aware, and if daytime solar charging is your goal that distinction matters more than the brand.
If you already have a battery, the ordering question comes up constantly: should surplus go to the house battery or the car? Broadly, the house battery earns its keep in the evening peak and the car does not care when it charges, so most Sydney setups fill the battery first and send the remainder to the car. It is a settings decision, not a hardware one, and it is worth getting right at commissioning.
Solar and the Solar Sharer window are not mutually exclusive, and they are not quite complements either. Both target the middle of the day. If you have solar, your own generation is already close to free and the Solar Sharer’s reallocation of costs into the evening may not suit you. If you do not have solar, the free window is the closest thing to it. Run the numbers on your own bill before switching plans.
When public charging still wins
This is not an argument that the public network is pointless. It is the only option that works in three situations:
- Road trips. Nothing at home replaces 350 kW on the Hume.
- No off-street parking. Terraces, older inner-west housing, on-street parking only.
- Apartments. NSW strata rules have improved — EV infrastructure counts as sustainability infrastructure, so a proposal passes on a simple majority rather than a 75% special resolution — but building capacity, metering and load management remain real obstacles.
For everyone with a driveway, a garage or a carport, the public network should be what you use on the occasional long trip, not the thing you depend on every week.
What to do next
- Check your distribution network — Ausgrid or Endeavour — before shopping for a tariff.
- Ask your retailer whether the Solar Sharer Offer is available on your network, and whether your car is actually home between 11am and 2pm often enough for it to pay.
- Check whether you have single-phase or three-phase supply. It sets your maximum charging speed and it changes the install.
- Decide whether you want solar-aware charging. If yes, that narrows the hardware list before you compare prices — it is the question most EV drivers get to last and should ask first.
- Get the switchboard assessed. Most Sydney installs are straightforward; older boards sometimes need work, and it is better to know before you buy the car.
We install EV chargers across Sydney for houses, townhouses, garages, driveways and carports, with solar-compatible options where they suit the site — see home EV charger installation for pricing and the process, or our solar, battery and EV FAQ for the questions that come up most.
FAQ
Is it cheaper to charge an EV at home or at a public charger?
At home, substantially. A NSW overnight EV tariff is 7 to 8c/kWh against 58 to 73c on public DC fast charging. Over an average 12,100 km year that is roughly $136 versus $1,258.
What is the Solar Sharer Offer?
An opt-in electricity offer introduced under the Default Market Offer framework and rolling out from 1 July 2026. It gives residential customers with a smart meter three hours of free electricity a day — 11am to 2pm in all NSW distribution regions — capped at 24 kWh. The cost is recovered across the rest of the day’s rates.
How much does it cost to charge an EV from solar?
The cost is the feed-in tariff you forgo, which in NSW for 2026–27 is 3.4 to 6.5 cents per kWh under IPART’s benchmark. For an average driver that is under $100 a year.
Are public EV chargers reliable in Australia?
Networks report 95 to 98% uptime, but uptime only measures whether the unit is connected. In a study of Californian government-funded chargers the actual chance of completing a session was 75 to 83%. No equivalent figure has been published for Australia.
Do I need a wall charger, or can I use a normal power point?
A 10 amp socket works but adds only a few kilometres of range per hour, which usually means charging outside the cheapest window. A 7.2 kW wall charger fills the car inside a six-hour off-peak block and gives you a dedicated protected circuit.
Can I charge my EV from my solar panels during the day?
Yes, with a solar-aware charger such as the Zappi, which diverts surplus generation to the car instead of exporting it. Not every charger can do this — the Tesla Gen 3 Wall Connector cannot.
How much does it cost to charge an electric car per 100 km?
About $1.12 on an overnight EV tariff, $5.30 on a standard flat rate, and $10.40 on public DC fast charging. The same distance costs about $16.52 in fuel at 206.5c a litre.
How long does it take to charge an electric car?
On a 10 amp power point, roughly 13 km of range an hour. On a 7.2 kW single-phase wall charger, about 45 km an hour — enough to add 270 km across a six-hour off-peak window. A 50 kW public fast charger adds around 310 km an hour.
Can you charge an electric car for free at a supermarket?
Sometimes. A number of shopping centres and councils host slower AC charging stations that are free to use, and they appear alongside paid units in the Chargefox app. Free DC fast charging is rare. The reliable free option in New South Wales is not a public charging station at all — it is the Solar Sharer window at home.
How much does it cost to install a home EV charger?
Our single-phase installs start at $995. The final figure depends on the cable run from the switchboard, whether you are on single-phase or three-phase supply, and whether the board needs work.
Is charging an electric car cheaper than petrol?
Substantially, on every option. Even charging exclusively on public fast chargers costs around $740 a year less than petrol over an average 12,100 km. Charging at home overnight costs about a fifteenth of what the same driving costs in fuel.