Australia's EV Charging Gaps: Where You're Most Likely to Run Flat
What 1,390 public chargers reveal about where Australia's fast-charging network thins out, and the one remote gap where an EV road trip still needs serious planning.
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Updated 5 October 2026. We have re-run this study on our current charging dataset, which adds operator-confirmed sites to Open Charge Map, and we now measure gaps in road kilometres. The first version, published in June, used Open Charge Map alone and overstated the remote gaps: it gave the Stuart Highway as about 1,500 km and the Nullarbor as about 975 km with no fast charger. We corrected those figures in late June, but a publishing error later put the original version back online. The figures below replace both.
Australia’s fast-charging network now reaches most of the country’s major touring routes. Our analysis of 1,390 public charging sites finds that the Hume, Pacific, Western and Bruce highways never leave you more than about 135 km from a fast charger, and even the Nullarbor, once the crossing that “proved” you couldn’t drive an EV across Australia, now has no gap longer than about 195 km. One stretch still stands out: about 680 km of the Stuart Highway between Katherine and Tennant Creek with no public fast charger. That remote leg, and the thin coverage across the Northern Territory and the north-west, is where a flat battery stops being an inconvenience and becomes a genuine remote breakdown.
Every public charger in our dataset, mapped. Fast (DC) chargers in green. The dashed red line marks the one route that still has a stretch of 300 km or more with no fast charger. Source: EV Roadside analysis.
Fast charging is still a southeastern story
Counting only fast (DC) chargers, the ones that make long-distance EV travel practical, New South Wales and Victoria hold about half the national total (394 of 785). Victoria alone has 220; Western Australia, South Australia, the Northern Territory, Tasmania and the ACT have 262 between them. The further you get from Melbourne and Sydney, the thinner the network becomes relative to the enormous distances involved.
The table below ranks the states and territories by fast chargers per 10,000 km², a measure of how far apart they are spread.
| State / Territory | Public chargers | Fast (DC) | AC-only | Fast per 10,000 km² | Biggest network |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northern Territory | 18 | 12 | 33% | 0.09 | NRMA (83%) |
| Western Australia | 384 | 125 | 67% | 0.49 | Chargefox (57%) |
| South Australia | 138 | 57 | 59% | 0.58 | Chargefox (46%) |
| Queensland | 148 | 129 | 13% | 0.75 | Evie (34%) |
| New South Wales | 274 | 174 | 36% | 2.17 | NRMA (22%) |
| Tasmania | 70 | 32 | 54% | 4.68 | Chargefox (81%) |
| Victoria | 310 | 220 | 29% | 9.67 | Chargefox (37%) |
| ACT | 48 | 36 | 25% | 152.67 | Evie (54%) |
Two patterns stand out. First, in the west and south a large share of public charging is AC-only: slow charging that’s fine overnight but no help when you need to add range quickly on a long drive. About 67% of WA’s public chargers fall into this category. Second, some markets lean on a single network: Chargefox runs 81% of Tasmania’s public chargers, and NRMA runs most of the Northern Territory’s, so one network’s outage hits a large share of local charging at once. That concentration is a quiet reliability risk that rarely shows up in headline charger counts.
Fast (DC) vs AC-only public chargers by state. WA has the most chargers overall, but most are AC-only.
The route gaps that matter
Charger counts don’t tell you what a road trip actually feels like. To find the gaps that matter, we placed every fast charger along seven major touring routes and measured the longest stretch, in road kilometres, with none.
The one remaining frontier is the Northern Territory section of the Stuart Highway:
- Stuart Highway (Port Augusta to Darwin): about 680 km between the fast chargers at Katherine and Tennant Creek. South of Tennant Creek the picture has changed: as of October 2026 there are fast chargers at Karlu Karlu (Devils Marbles), Ti Tree, Alice Springs and Erldunda (the first three newly listed as live by NRMA), so the rest of the highway breaks into legs of roughly 120 to 250 km. NRMA lists Elliott, between Katherine and Tennant Creek, as coming very soon.
The other remote routes are now manageable with planning:
- Eyre Highway / Nullarbor (Norseman to Ceduna): no stretch longer than about 195 km, thanks to the WA EV Network and RAA Charge rollouts. Remote off-grid chargers can be slow or out of service, so carry a buffer.
- North West Coastal Highway (Perth to Broome): about 235 km at most, between Karratha and Port Hedland.
The busy corridors are well covered. On the Hume (Sydney to Melbourne), Pacific (Sydney to Brisbane), Western (Melbourne to Adelaide) and Bruce (Brisbane to Cairns) highways, no gap between fast chargers exceeds about 135 km, comfortably within range for any current EV. For most people on most trips, the “can you even drive an EV across Australia?” worry is misplaced. It’s the Northern Territory, not the capital-to-capital runs, where the network still has a real hole.
The longest stretch with no public fast charger on each major touring route, in road kilometres.
Why this matters for roadside
A flat battery in the suburbs is an inconvenience: a tow of a few kilometres to a charger, covered by standard roadside assistance for EVs. Between Katherine and Tennant Creek, the same situation is a genuinely remote breakdown, where the nearest fast charger could be hundreds of kilometres away and a tow is long and expensive. The charging map is, in effect, a roadside-risk map: the thinner the fast-charging network, the more a run to empty costs you.
If you’re planning a trip through these areas, our guides on what happens when an EV runs out of charge and the EV breakdown checklist are worth reading first, and our Darwin to Adelaide and Adelaide to Perth trip guides cover each stop. The charger map shows exactly where the fast chargers are, and you can browse fast chargers by state.
Methodology and data
The analysis uses our editorial charging dataset as of October 2026: operational public chargers from Open Charge Map, licensed CC-BY-4.0, plus sites we have confirmed with the operators (RAA Charge, the WA EV Network, NRMA and Tesla Superchargers open to all EVs, among others), 1,390 sites in total. Map-only community pins are not counted. A “fast charger” is any site with a maximum power of 50 kW or more (DC). State counts and network shares come from our published charger dataset. For the route gaps, we placed every fast charger within a 50 km corridor of each highway, converted positions to road distance using OSRM routing on OpenStreetMap data, and found the longest stretch with none, rounded to the nearest 5 km. Charger rollouts change quickly, so these gaps keep closing.
The underlying figures are free to download and cite:
- State-level data: ev-charging-gaps-states.csv
- Route gaps: ev-charging-gaps-routes.csv
Please attribute to EV Roadside with a link to this page. For media enquiries, see our media and press page.
Frequently asked questions
Where are Australia's biggest EV charging gaps?
On one remote stretch of the Stuart Highway. As of October 2026 the longest distance with no public fast charger on any major touring route is about 680 km, between Katherine and Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory; NRMA lists a site at Elliott, partway along, as coming very soon. Everywhere else the gaps are far smaller: about 195 km at most across the Nullarbor, about 235 km at most between Perth and Broome, and no more than about 135 km on the Hume, Pacific, Western and Bruce highways.
Which state has the worst EV fast-charging coverage?
By fast chargers per unit of area, the Northern Territory is far behind: 12 public fast chargers across 1.35 million km², most of them NRMA sites on the Stuart Highway. Western Australia and South Australia lean heavily on slower AC charging: about 67% of WA's public chargers and 59% of SA's can only charge at AC speeds.
Is Australia's public charging network concentrated in the cities?
Less than you might think. About 61% of fast chargers sit outside the capital-city metro areas, largely along the highways. The bigger imbalance is between states: New South Wales and Victoria hold about 50% of the country's fast chargers (394 of 785).
What happens if I run out of charge in a regional area?
Away from the cities, the standard response is a flatbed tow to the nearest charging station, which standard roadside assistance covers for EVs. Mobile roadside charging exists only in parts of a few capital cities. On remote routes, planning around the known fast chargers, and carrying a buffer, matters far more than it does in town. See our guide on what happens when an EV runs out of charge.
How current is this charging data?
It reflects our editorial charging dataset as of October 2026: Open Charge Map's operational public chargers plus sites we have confirmed with the operators, such as NRMA's Northern Territory chargers and the WA EV Network. Networks are expanding fast on regional highways, so the gaps keep closing. We publish the underlying data so the figures can be checked and re-run.