Are Apartments Slowing EV Adoption?

Originally published on EV Infrastructure Summit June 9th 2026

One of the biggest inhibitors to EV uptake is not the person with a driveway. It’s the person who lives in an apartment.

For households with private parking, the EV proposition can be relatively simple: install a charger, plug in overnight, wake up ready to go. The decision, electricity bill and infrastructure belong to one household. 

Apartment residents face a very different reality. 

Parking spaces are located within shared buildings, electricity may run through common-area power, and their ability to charge depends on a chain of collective decisions. From strata approval, building management and cost allocation, to electrical capacity, billing systems, and fire concerns, apartment charging requires resident buy-in across the whole building – not just from the person who owns the EV.

Apartment charging is a governance problem as much as an infrastructure problem. Who decides who pays, who benefits, how power is managed, how residents are billed, and whether the building is prepared for future demand?

These questions now sit at the centre of Australia’s EV transition. If charging infrastructure is only easy for households with garages and driveways, EV adoption risks becoming structurally easier for homeowners than for people living in higher-density housing. 

Make charging accessible

Sam Kelley, EV Project Manager for Waverley, Woollahra and Randwick Councils, is working to help make EV charging accessible to residents who cannot install a private charger at home.

“We generally say if you have off-street parking, you have no barriers,” says Kelley. “You can just plug into your wall and be on your way and never think about it. The people who don’t have that accessibility are people in townhouses or apartments.”

Currently focused on apartment buildings, Kelley is not interested in treating EV charging as a race towards faster or more expensive infrastructure. Instead, he is helping apartment buildings access a more practical option: lower-cost smart plugs installed in shared apartment car parks.

The idea is deliberately unglamorous. These are not rapid chargers. They are closer to intelligent wall sockets that allow residents to charge slowly, usually overnight, from their own parking space. 

“It’s more like charging your iPhone,” explains Kelley. “You put it on charge overnight and at some point it’s fully charged.”

The art of simplicity

Simplicity matters because a strata committee may be reluctant to approve expensive infrastructure for only one or two EV owners, particularly if other residents do not yet see the benefit. But convenience and affordability can change the equation, giving buildings a lower-risk way to support EV uptake before demand becomes overwhelming.

Kelley says conventional wall chargers in apartment settings can cost around AUD $6,000 each. By contrast, the smart plug installations being supported through the councils’ apartment charging work are closer to AUD $1,000 to $2,000 per plug installed.

“It’s not as fast or as glamorous as a $6,000 wall charger,” he says. “But if you can get one for $1,000 and it does the job, that makes a lot more sense.”

A lower price point changes the economics. Smart plugs can bill individual users and reimburse the building for electricity used, giving buildings a way to introduce EV charging without waiting for mass EV ownership or asking every resident to fund a major upgrade.

A recent Woollahra Council case study shows how that logic can work in practice. At Yarranabbe Gardens, a 77-unit apartment block in Darling Point, five intelligent power sockets were installed in January 2026 after the building identified slow charging as the most practical and affordable option for its limited power supply. 

The proposal was accepted because it addressed three core concerns for shared buildings: low electrical impact, a user-pays system and no dedicated car spaces.

The plugs can also communicate with each other to manage electrical load, reducing the risk of exceeding the building’s electrical capacity. For apartment dwellers, that could make charging more affordable, predictable and accessible, without forcing them to rely exclusively on public charging networks.

For Kelley, the point is not just to help more charging infrastructure become available, but to make sure the EV transition does not exclude people without private parking. “Everyone needs to have access to EV charging infrastructure,” he says. “We need to make it reasonably priced and accessible for people who don’t have off-street parking.”

Beyond the driveway

The broader lesson is clear: the EV transition will not be solved by car manufacturers, councils, or builders alone. New developments need to be designed with charging in mind from inception, and existing apartment buildings will need cheaper retrofit options. 

Councils can help reduce friction, support early adoption and make the business case easier for strata committees to accept. The infrastructure does not need to be flashy – it needs to be affordable, scalable and reliable enough to work.

If Australia wants EV adoption to move beyond households with driveways, apartment charging cannot remain an afterthought. It has to become part of the basic infrastructure of shared living.