In a decade, petrol cars will be banned in some parts of Australia. So what will we be driving?

There are more than a few question marks over Australia’s driving future.

Are hydrogen cars becoming a bigger part of the market? Is interest in electric vehicles stalling? And aren’t we supposed to be in driverless cars by now?

Yet there are some concrete changes, too. The ACT, for example, has already said it will ban petrol and diesel car sales by 2035.

That’s only 11 years away. So what are Australians likely to be driving by then?

How many Australians are actually driving EVs?

Australia is still a long way behind other nations when it comes to electric vehicle (EV) use.

That’s in contrast to Europe, where last year more than 23 per cent of new car registrations were EVs. 

Currently EVs make up roughly 8 per cent of the market in Australia, Toby Hagon, editor of EV Central, tells ABC Radio National’s Download This Show. 

That’s roughly 200,000 EVs on our roads.

But he says recent headlines declaring “EV sales are falling off a cliff” in Australia are inaccurate.

“The growth in EV sales has slowed, absolutely, but there’s still a fair bit of interest there, and there are a lot more models coming,” he says.

“Tesla’s led the way until now, but you’re starting to see a lot more competition kick into the market.”

In Australia last year, Tesla EVs still accounted for the top two EV models sold, but there are now nearly 100 other models on the market here, up from 70 models in total in 2022. 

EV sales slowed after a boom of early adopters, excited to rush out and grab hold of the new technology, Hagon says.

But it’s a harder sell to convince the next portion of the market — those less excited by the new tech, who’ve been buying petrol and diesel cars for decades — that an EV is a better option for them.

EV sales are also lower in Australian rural and regional areas than in metro areas.

Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson, future economies reporter with the Australian Associated Press, says that’s because those drivers are more likely to experience “range anxiety” — concern about the limited distance EVs can travel on one charge and access to charging stations across the country.

Stations increased by about 70 per cent last year and they’re still rolling out to meet demand.

“[But] we will obviously have to make a lot more of them by … 2035 when we’ll see a lot more electric vehicles on the road,” Dudley-Nicholson says.

As it stands, she says a long-distance drive in an EV requires a fair bit of forward planning to mark out charging points.

They also require a substantial investment.

The cheapest EV in Australia, the MG4 hatchback, currently costs less than $31,000 — and while that’s about $20,000 less than the cost of Australia’s top-selling Tesla model, cost is still one of the biggest barriers to EV uptake.

Why aren’t there more electric utes?

Charging infrastructure isn’t the only thing holding back the Australian EV market.

“The big holdout is utes,” Dudley-Nicholson says.

The ute market in Australia is massive, comprising more than 20 per cent of cars sold.

That’s a very big slice of a market which, last year, saw more than 1.2 million new cars sold.

Yet there’s only one electric ute model currently sold in Australia.

That’s because luxury cars offer EV sellers greater profit margins, Hagon says.

But he says utes are also a harder car to make electric.

“The ute is sort of the Swiss Army knife of cars. These days people expect it to not only do the family duties, they expect it to lift heavy things, tow a lot and go big distances,” he says.

Performance and towing aren’t the issue; range is.

“You can halve your range, or even get less than half your range, once you’re towing a decent load on the back. So it makes it very tough for the utes,” Hagon says.

“I’d argue that probably the hardest piece of that puzzle is the charging.

“Once you’ve got that charging infrastructure into those more remote areas, then it makes a ute a lot easier.”

Hagon sees change on the horizon.

“You’ve got car makers lining up, waiting to do it, and particularly the Chinese brands are very keen to jump on board and sell as many as they can into as many market segments as they can,” he says.

“The puzzle pieces just have to come together.”

According to the National Roads and Motorists’ Association (NRMA), there are Dutch, Chinese and Japanese car manufacturers “poised” to enter the EV ute market in Australia.

What’s the main problem with hydrogen cars?

Another much-touted alternative to petrol and diesel cars is the hydrogen car.

In these vehicles, colourless, odourless hydrogen gas passes through the car’s fuel cell, where it interacts with oxygen — a process that generates electricity.

Toyota’s local manager of carbon policy, Andrew Willis, told the ABC the only emission from the cars is water vapour, after the hydrogen reforms with oxygen, which is “pure and green, and you could water the garden [with it]”.

But hydrogen cars also face hurdles to becoming a market staple.

One is infrastructure. Unlike electricity, hydrogen isn’t accessible in every corner of the country.

Dudley-Nicholson says there are currently only three hydrogen cars on the road in Australia, and fewer than 10 hydrogen refuelling stations.

Another hurdle is cost.

Hydrogen fuel cells are very expensive to produce compared to a normal electric car battery, Hagon says.

However, at least one company — Toyota — is optimistic about hydrogen’s future, and is exploring alternatives to battery electric vehicles.

“I think it’s good that the car makers are exploring other alternatives,” he says.

“That’s terrific, if they can make it work … The reality at the moment is they haven’t been able to from a financial perspective.”

When will cars drive themselves?

Driverless cars are already being trialled in several different countries, with mixed results. 

“The brands are all working towards it,” Hagon says.

Although several years ago some car makers claimed we’d all be in driverless vehicles by now, this has proven to be a premature call.

“The challenge all of [the car manufacturers] are hitting is that it is far harder than any of them had anticipated,” Hagon says.

Dudley-Nicholson agrees we’re a long way off driverless cars.

“I love that this generation thinks that they might not have to drive, but I think they will,” she says.

“Driverless cars have certainly evolved … and maybe it can follow the car in front of you, maybe it can scan the signs and tell you what speed that you should be going at.

“But if you’ve driven one of those cars, you probably know how many times it beeps when it doesn’t need to.”

Driverless technology operates either through “geofencing” — mapping an area to the millimetre, so a car knows exactly where it is and how to deal with its surroundings. Or, it adapts to its environment visually.

“That’s the approach that Tesla’s taking … They’re getting their cars to work purely off cameras,” Hagon says.

“And take a country like Australia, it’s impossible to go and map every centimetre of Australia [perfectly] once you get to those remote areas.

“There’s a heck of a lot of work to do.”

But the potential of driverless technology is huge, Dudley-Nicholson says.

“The car manufacturers can see this opportunity where cars can drive themselves and they’re not going to get distracted by text messages or noisy messages or noisy kids in the car, and they’re not going to get drunk and go out at the wrong time on a particular night,” she says.

“There’s so much promise, but we’re just not there yet.”