Buyers need to consider repairs, spare parts and charging infrastructure

For anyone who has driven a car in Australia lately, two shifts have become impossible to ignore. First, the weekly petrol run has gone from a routine errand to a minor financial crisis. Second, electric cars are finally having their breakthrough moment.

“I wouldn’t see it as a shift – it’s an absolute turn,” says Paul Ellis, local spokesman for electric vehicle maker BYD. “A shift normally implies a couple of degrees of movement … you won’t see another shift like this until we see flying cars.”

The numbers highlight this staggering change. In August 2025, fully electric models held a 10 per cent share of Australia’s new vehicle market. Last month, they reached 25 per cent. Over the same period, pure petrol and diesel models dropped from 69 per cent to less than 50 per cent.

Auto executives and experts agree that EV uptake in Australia, previously a global laggard, has decisively turned the corner.

“Tipping point is probably a good word for it,” says Cox Automotive analyst Mike Costello. “It’s an enormous change in a very short amount of time.”

The economic incentives driving this pivot are clear. With the Middle East war choking crude oil supplies and driving up global fuel prices, Australians switching to EVs could save $3000 on fuel this year, per industry estimates. Simultaneously, lower-cost Chinese models have brought EV prices to parity with combustion-engine vehicles.

Beyond household savings, the fast-paced transition brings public health and environmental benefits, accelerating efforts to slash vehicle emissions and combat dangerous levels of global warming.

However, this rapid transformation introduces an urgent set of challenges for governments, automakers and utilities. Because Australia’s EV transition was long treated as a “some day” scenario, planning for infrastructure and secondary impacts has lagged.

Now, critical questions are coming to a head: can public charging keep up with demand? Are repair networks and parts suppliers equipped for the influx? And how will governments replace lost fuel tax revenue to maintain roads?

“When EVs were still a novelty, all of this stuff was theoretical,” Costello explains. “But now, all of this is actual.”

The influx of EV brands makes Australia one of the most concentrated and competitive markets globally. Over 20 new brands have entered over the past decade – including BYD, MG, Great Wall Motor, Chery and Zeekr. Yet, overall vehicle sales remain broadly static, meaning more brands are competing for the same buyer pool.

“For 1.2 million annual vehicle sales in the market, we have 65 different brands and there will be about 80 by this time next year,” says Costello. “It’s very difficult to see how they can all make a strong business case, and it’s very difficult to see how the pie can be cut into that many slices without impacts being felt.”

This overcrowding is pushing legacy manufacturers to leverage their extensive repair networks and ingrained presence as selling points.

The new Chinese EVs hitting our roads are well within warranty and haven’t needed their first services yet, but Motor Trades Association of Australia executive director Bruce Billson believes brand durability and repair ease will become growing problems.

While brands like BYD have an established Australian presence, allowing independent mechanics to learn their systems as early vehicles come off warranty, the longevity of other Chinese automakers remains unclear.

“There’s a great focus on getting stock into the country and establishing dealer networks, and they’re at a much earlier phase. It points to our insatiable appetite for new and different car models, but also the reality that some of these newer entrants probably won’t reach critical mass and they won’t all survive,” Billson says.

Billson urges new manufacturers to make replacement parts easy for local independent mechanics to access, as well as to provide information and access to allow such repairs. He is concerned by design variations that are increasingly common among newer Chinese brands, that mean components that a maker used to have as standard across their range are now specific to individual models.

”Changing a headlight is no longer a straightforward thing, and when you’ve got very bespoke designs, you start getting very model-specific parts,” Billson says.

It’s one shortcoming that legacy makers are seizing on as a point of difference. BMW’s Australia chief executive Vikram Pawah sees his company’s “premium” association as extending both to after-sales care, as well as its repair network. He notes a $120 million investment from BMW in a local parts stockpile, which occupies 28,000 square metres of warehousing in Australia.

Pawah is not convinced that even the new entrants promising luxury vehicles have post-purchase service investments to match. “You can go to the top of a mountain and shout out ‘I’m a premium brand’, but until the customer thinks you are, it’s not going to make a difference,” Pawah says.

EV companies, meanwhile, have at times put up barriers to independent mechanics even outside of warranty periods, requiring in-house repairs within their networks. It’s led to a situation where a Tesla in Tasmania needing servicing must be shipped to the mainland.

“It’s one thing to be able to sell a vehicle here, it’s another to make sure it’s dependable and serviceable if [the company] has left the market,” Billson says.

Another key concern when the new influx of EVs begins needing servicing will be whether there are enough mechanics in the country to handle the task. Australia already has a shortfall of roughly 38,000 mechanics, Billson says, a problem which is separate to the unexpected surge in EV uptake and the fact that working on electrified vehicles requires additional training.

Even body work unrelated to the drive train, such as wheel alignments or body repairs, requires knowing how to safely depower and repower a vehicle’s battery. Mechanics being left off the list of skills exemptions under the government’s new migration caps, announced this week, only adds to the question of whether Australia is equipped for its earlier-than-expected EV transition.

At carmakers with more mature EV offerings, training levels are higher – 50 per cent of BMW’s 600 in-house technicians in Australia can work on electrified vehicles. But with a majority of Australia’s vehicle fleet still using combustion engines, convincing independent manufacturers to invest in upskilling can be difficult, Billson warns.

Ford is another brand trying to set itself apart from the influx of cheaper EVs. Last week, the company – whose local electrified offering had largely focused on plug-in hybrid offerings – unveiled two new purely electric vehicles it plans to launch in Australia next year.

Ford’s chief executive Fadi Mawal welcomes the “very, very competitive” market that had emerged from the war-induced oil price shocks and oversupply from Chinese EV-focused brands directed at Australia, but questions if motorists could trust that such companies would still be in existence, or at least equipped to provide service and replacement parts, down the track.

“Our key position is that we’re fighting [for] and supporting the franchise and we’re supporting our dealer network and supporting our customers and we’re building a business that’s going to be sustainable in the long term,” Mawal tells this masthead.

”Yes, you can go and buy a cheaper SUV and a cheaper sports car. But … our customers are getting great products, with great technology, with great value and backed by a business that’s been around for 100 years and is going to be around for the next 100.”

Cox Automotive analyst Costello says “growing pains” have been evident in some of the newer EV companies struggling to keep up with the rollout of enough dealerships and support centres.

“If you go from zero to a huge number of sales, you need to make sure you are scaling up that support ecosystem behind it,” he says. This is where the legacy players, like Toyota, still hold an advantage because they have built over decades trusted relationships with people, which “takes time and consistent investment”, he adds. “I think, long term, what is going to sort the wheat from the chaff is the ones who look after their customers really well.”

BYD acknowledges that some customers in Australia have been unsatisfied with after-sales service and long repair times and delays sourcing spare parts, and says it is investing heavily to improve the customer experience. “It’s not perfect, but it’s much better, and it’s getting better every day,” says BYD spokesman Ellis.

The Shenzhen-based company manages a growing network of local parts warehouses in four major cities to keep up with its surging sales, and says it is on track to have 150 dealerships in Australia by the end of the year. “There is a perception that people have to wait six weeks for a part for an EV – that’s deal-breaking for many people, and we are trying to be one step ahead,” says Ellis. “It’s a rapid acceleration, but we need to do it to be able to service our customers in the future.”

Whether Australia will have enough public EV-charging stations is another key question. Australia currently has more than 1300 public charging sites available, housing more than 4000 individual charging ports. Data from EV analytics firm Carloop shows NSW had 515 fast-charging sites as of last month, while Victoria had 396. However, with drivers making the switch to EVs “faster than ever, public fast-charging infrastructure is failing to keep up”, Carloop founder Riz Akhter says. “That’s going to be the biggest challenge,” he says.

Many of Australia’s public chargers are run by commercial operators such as Evie Networks, EVX and Chargefox, while others are owned by service station operators like Shell, Ampol and BP, or motoring clubs like the NRMA and RACV. Tesla has its own extensive public charging network across the country, while BYD has plans to invest in ultra-fast charging, capable of replenishing 400 kilometres of range in five minutes, by the end of 2027.

BMW boss Pawah urges greater public and private investment in charging infrastructure. While his company is releasing vehicles with greater ranges – to the point where charging can be a once-weekly or less requirement – customers of older models are likely to be queueing alongside owners of the newer Chinese brands, some of which have smaller batteries, at roadside charging points if capacity isn’t boosted.

As new drivers enjoy cheaper operating costs, a reality check looms. A distance-based tax has long been mooted to replace the fuel excise levied on petrol sales.

Victoria’s recent road-user charge was ruled unconstitutional by the High Court in 2023. More recently, NSW expects a distance-based charge by next July, proposing 2.97¢ per kilometre for fully electric vehicles and 2.38¢ for plug-in hybrids.

This eagerness has the industry awaiting federal clarity on a nationally consistent road-user charge.

This week, the Australian Electric Vehicle Association (AEVA) proposed a charge of 3¢ per tonne-kilometre, factoring in both vehicle weight and distance travelled.

Controversially, heavier EVs and large combustion vehicles like utes and SUVs would pay more under this proposal, reflecting road damage. AEVA proposes a universal charge, meaning petrol-car drivers would pay both this charge and the fuel excise.

Regardless of the final model, manufacturers are bracing for a national road-user charge that could blunt current EV enthusiasm.

“Customers will need to make their own decision on their whole-of-life cost, that will obviously be a consideration. We expect that will have an impact [on EV sales],” Ford boss Mawal says.

BMW’s Pawah wants a “level playing field” charge. “It’s clear the roads need maintenance … The customer should not be skewered into a particular vehicle choice by a levy,” he says.

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