Last updated: 25 May 2025
Here I discuss the key issues to be considered if you are thinking of transitioning from a traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) car to an electric vehicle (EV). If you are looking for a good general information resource about EVs, then https://electricvehicles.uk/ or in Australia https://aeva.asn.au/info/ fits the bill.
For my purposes, cars are personally owned vehicles that people use for daily travel. In operation, they consume a “fuel” – either electricity or a fossil fuel – and they require regular maintenance work done to keep them in good operating order. To reduce accident costs and liability, they are also normally insured. We should also bear in mind that private cars spend most of their lives parked somewhere.
For cars, the cost of fuelling, insuring and maintaining the vehicle over time can significantly outweigh the initial capital cost, so the total cost of ownership over a reasonable working life is a good comparative measure when considering purchase alternatives. Typically, owners replace their cars every 5-10 years. Increasingly, public transport and personal mobility (walking, bikes and scooters) are very healthy and low cost alternatives to car ownership, especially for people living in inner urban areas.
Now, there are three different kinds of car available and they have different capital and operating costs. There are traditional ICE cars, EVs and a combination of the two, which are typically called hybrids. Hybrids are a transitional technology that will likely disappear in the future – they are not as “fuel” efficient as EVs and they are mechanically much more complex but they do now have a longer operating range between refuellings, and can be refuelled faster than EVs. I ignore hybrids for the remainder of this article because I believe that they only really make sense for people who regularly drive long distances.
Compared to ICE cars, EVs were only developed recently, so that global research and development capacity and capabilities are still growing. They also have relatively small overall market share. Thus, EVs are generally more expensive to initially buy than ICE cars. This pricing premium is steadily reducing as EV technologies mature and market share grows and should eventually flip so that EVs become cheaper than ICE cars because they are less complex to make and have fewer parts.
In terms of cost/distance travelled, electricity is much, much cheaper than any fossil fuel but refuelling does take much longer. This “fuel” cost reduction is especially true if you have access to low cost electricity from residential solar panels. Also, EVs can use regenerative braking to recover some of the energy previously used to accelerate the car up to speed (typically about 20%). In regenerative braking, as your car is slowing down the electric motor that drives the car is temporarily reconfigured to be an electric generator which partially recharges the battery. This is not possible with ICE cars. See (Zamorano, 2023) for example.
Mechanically, EVs are much simpler than ICE cars. EVs typically do not have a varying ratio gearbox, nor do they have a liquid fuel pumping system, and they are often air-cooled. Electric motors have far fewer parts than ICE motors and do not need large lubricating oil reservoirs. Regenerative braking also means reduced brake wear and tear. However, because they are quite heavy, EVs can reduce tyre life. All this means that maintenance costs for EVs are significantly lower than for ICE cars. For example, EVs often only need to be serviced every 30,000kms, and the work focuses on checking tyre and brake wear. ICE cars typically need to be serviced every 10-15,000kms, and the service involves changing oils and other working fluids.
While EV maintenance costs are often lower, there are concerns with the capabilities and capacity of EV vehicle maintenance organisations – we are just not training enough technicians, vehicle diagnostic equipment is not widely available and there are few after-market parts suppliers – see this article from The Age newspaper for details.
In Australia, insurance for EVs is typically higher than for a comparable ICE car, see The New Daily – Electric Vehicle Insurance for details.
Break-even analyses show that now the initial price premium for an EV is typically recovered from operating cost savings in 3-6 years. This break-even period will reduce in the future. For example, see Shelby Church (10 November 2024). Total CO2 emissions from the manufacture and operating use for an EV is lower than for an ICE car after less than 1 year of use, and gets progressively lower as usage time increases – see (Just Have a Think, December 2024), for example.
EVs do contains very large, expensive batteries that are costly to replace but they seem to be very long lived. The Chinese auto company BYD say that they are very confident that their drivetrains (battery + motors) will easily outlast the equivalent in an ICE car (Cardinal, 2025). Also, BYD and Tesla offer 8-year/160,000km warranties on their batteries. Real world experiences suggests 1-2% capacity loss over 20,000kms of driving, or say, 10% over 150,000kms. Moreover, the scrap value for old EV batteries should be high in the future when they become commonly repurposed for use as home batteries – Tesla locks in Australian site for new battery refurbishment facility
The data also shows that EV batteries very rarely catch fire – statistically, you are more likely to have a petrol fire in an ICE car than a battery fire in an EV (Fisk, 2024 or Guthrie 2024). Along with other, the Fisk and Guthrie articles note than many of the battery fires that you read about are with low quality, smaller electric bicycle, scooter, golf cart, etc batteries. Nonetheless, some apartment body corporates, and even regional fire authorities, are ignoring the science and instituting rules to ban EV charging in apartment building car parks – see Purtill (2024), for example. This can be a significant issue for some EV owners.
Depending on your usage, EVs typically need a weekly full recharge, or daily “top-up” charging. This is easy if you have home off-street parking that can be fitted with a charger. This can be difficult in older apartment buildings which do not have electricity distribution in their car parks. Unfortunately, reliable access to public charging stations can be difficult in many parts of Australia, e.g. a Google Maps search identifies very few public chargers in the City of Port Phillip, and some of the reviews about their availability are not favourable.
Also, vehicle to grid technologies are rapidly maturing so that in the future EVs will be thought of as “home batteries on wheels”. This means that the car could be parked at home, charged during the day from rooftop solar panels and then drawn down again to power the house during the night (Retrovolt Solutions, December 2024). A typical EV can provide power to a house for 2-3 days on one charge. The overall electricity savings for people with a home solar system and a lightly driven car will soon be very compelling. This situation will become even more compelling in the future as the income from exporting electricity to the grid from home solar systems become ever less attractive. However, it may not be possible to use your car as a battery on wheels if it is heavily used.
Considering all the above, I generally believe that if your existing ICE car is in good condition, the case for changing to an EV is not very compelling yet, unless you are concerned about personal CO2 emissions. Also, if you live in an apartment building without easy access to home or work EV charging infrastructure it may also be best to wait. By contrast, if you need to replace your vehicle and have a residential solar system and off-street parking so that putting in charging equipment is easy, then you should probably change to an EV now. The general situation is trending towards making EVs more and more attractive so that their market share will continue to increase and their benefits will become progressively more compelling.
Once you have made the decision to invest in a new EV, (Chasing Cars, December 2024) is a good video that compares the EVs now available in Australia.
Richard Whitfield
Some interesting references:
Cardinal E (14 February 2025) Myths on used electric vehicle battery health debunked www.drive.com.au, available at https://www.drive.com.au/caradvice/new-data-reveals-the-battery-life-in-used-electric-vehicles/
Chasing Cars (24 December 2024) Best EV: Ultimate Comparison of 24 Electric Cars YouTube Video, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azDxacbPx50&t=36s
Fisk K (11 Dec 2024) Developers exploit loophole to fit EV chargers despite fire warnings www.drive.com.au, available at https://www.drive.com.au/news/developers-exploit-loophole-to-fit-ev-chargers-despite-fire-warnings-exclusive/
Guthrie S (15 December 2024) The easiest ways to reduce your risk of an electric car battery fire www.drive.com.au, available at https://www.drive.com.au/caradvice/the-easiest-ways-to-reduce-your-risk-of-an-electric-car-battery-fire/
Just Have a Think (16 December 2024) Are Electric Vehicles a MISTAKE? YouTube video, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trepC6pbs0M
NSW Gov (n.d.) Why buy an electric vehicle? Transport for NSW, available at https://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/projects/electric-vehicles/why-buy-an-electric-vehicle
Purtill J (17 December 2024) Strata owners are increasingly banning electric vehicles from charging in apartment carparks ABC News, available at https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-12-17/strata-residents-banning-electric-vehicle-ev-charging/104707754
Retrovolt Solutions (24 December 2024) Revolutionizing Energy in Australia: Introducing the First V2G Charger for BYD & MG EVs YouTube Video, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu8KV4dT3NI
Shelby Church (10 November 2024) Tesla Model 3 TRUE Cost of Ownership After 5 Years. Do I still Recommend it? YouTube video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gree9OG7wi8
Zamorano R (Aug 2023) Average Efficiences of Different Car Systems linkedin.com, available at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/average-efficiencies-different-car-systems-raul-zamorano/