Australians are purchasing electric vehicles at an increasing rate, with sales more than doubling year on year at a rate equivalent to one EV being sold every 100 seconds.

By comparison, petrol and diesel vehicle sales declined by 14% year on year, according to the council's chief executive, Julie Delvecchio. EVs accounted for one in four new vehicles sold in the first half of the year, representing a 12.1% increase from the first six months of 2025, according to the State of EVs report.

"EVs are being taken up as a cost-of-living measure by households across Australia," Delvecchio said, noting that the ongoing fuel crisis had accelerated the trend but was "not the starting gun".

"It exposed the value of the policy work that had already been done - and made the lower running costs and energy security benefits of EVs much more immediate for Australian households," she said.

As of June, there were 612,000 EVs in the national vehicle fleet. "We are on track to hit the target of 1 million EVs on Australian roads by next year," said Aman Gaur, head of policy and advocacy at the EV Council.

The Australian Capital Territory, where 44% of newly registered cars are electric, retained the highest proportion of electric vehicle registrations among Australian jurisdictions, while Tarneit in Melbourne's west recorded the highest uptake of any individual postcode.

A key factor in the growing uptake has been the national vehicle efficiency standard, which requires carmakers to supply new vehicles that meet an average per-kilometre emissions target. The standard had "substantially increased the options and the price competitiveness of EVs", with nearly 200 EV models available in 2026, Gaur said.

The council is calling on the federal government to extend the standard beyond 2029 to align with the government's 2035 emissions reduction target.

The report found that charging infrastructure had largely kept pace with growing EV demand, with the number of public charging locations increasing to 4,268 across the country.

Gaur said electric buses and cars were being adopted at a faster rate than electric trucks and vans, for which sales continued to account for less than 1% of their respective markets.

"Every truck that is electric is an upgrade to Australia's energy security," Delvecchio said. "We've barely touched the sides on that transition."

The report also found that the federal, ACT and NSW governments' EV policies had recorded stronger progress than those of South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania and the Northern Territory, which the report said had recorded a decline in policy progress.

"Queensland and the Northern Territory are moving back to fossil fuels rather than trying to electrify their transport systems. The most disappointing example of this was when the Queensland government recently invested in 630 diesel buses. The diesel buses will be on Queensland roads until the end of the next decade, and they will certainly be polluting the air in Brisbane when the Olympics are held."