EVs At The Tipping Point: Why You Don’t Want To Be A Late Adopter

These graphs tell an important story. On the left is how horses disappeared from cities once cars took off. On the right is the same kind of substitution curve - petrol and diesel powered cars giving way to EVs. Horses didn’t fade gently; they were replaced rapidly. And internal combustion engines aren't “phasing down” with polite applause either. They’re already being substituted - and the steep part of the curve is the part we’re entering.

A new paper from the Centre for Net Zero explains what many of us can already see at the traffic lights: the global transition to electric vehicles has reached a tipping point. One in five new cars sold worldwide is now electric, and we’re approaching the steep, exponential phase of the S-curve.

This brings me to my favourite line in the whole report: the colour TV analogy. EVs aren’t a weird novelty product. They’re a like-for-like replacement, and like-for-like replacements diffuse fast. Once people saw colour TVs, they didn't go back. And they certainly didn't brag about buying black-and-white once colour became available.

Australia is no longer “early days”

For years, Australians were told EVs were niche - for inner-city types, for the wealthy, for “sometime in the future”. That story is ageing badly.

The EV Council’s State of EVs 2025 summary shows they were 12.1% of new car sales - up from 9.6% in 2024. By September 2025, Australia had more than 410,000 EVs in its national fleet. 

So no, it’s not “everyone” yet. But it’s certainly no longer fringe. We’re entering that exciting middle phase: past the innovators and early adopters, and into the early majority - where the technology succeeds or fails based on systems, policy, and design.

And that’s where the conversation needs to grow up.

EVs aren’t just a car. They’re part of an energy system.

Much of the rhetoric about EVs in Australia is still stuck on “range anxiety”, “where do I charge?”, “what about the batteries?”, “but I can’t tow a caravan”, and so on.

A better question is: what happens when millions of vehicles become part of the electricity system? The Centre for Net Zero explains how this next stage will be defined by integration: EVs are set to become active participants in a more flexible, decarbonised grid. Smart charging shifts demand to times of abundant renewable supply, cutting costs further and reducing grid strain; and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) will turn every EV into a mobile battery storage opportunity.

This is the systems-thinking leap: once you stop seeing EV as consumer products and start seeing them as a grid asset, everything changes. Our garages become energy infrastructure.

My garage has 120 kWh of storage. That changes how I think about everything.

We’ve got roughly 120 kWh sitting in our garage, thanks to our Nissan Leaf and Hyundai Ioniq. And we’ve got almost 40 kW of solar on the roof. So we’re already at the delicious point where we don’t get power bills - the energy company pays us.

That’s not a lifestyle flex. It’s a hint about where Australia can go if we stop treating transport and electricity as separate worlds.

Because the moment you add bidirectional capability, then your household stops being just a load and starts being a participant.

And this isn’t airy theory. CSIRO and Essential Energy have already demonstrated V2G using commercially available technology. They've proven EVs can draw from rooftop solar in the middle of the day, and then export power back to the grid at peak times.  In parallel, ARENA’s national roadmap frames bidirectional charging as fast, flexible storage that can soak up surplus rooftop solar and support local grids during peaks. And it’s blunt that V2G is the highest-value, most scalable “bidi” application.

EVs will make Australia's whole energy system cheaper, cleaner, and more resilient.

So what’s next?

Here’s the truth: the exponential phase of EV adoption is close if not already occuring. Which is why I keep coming back to the late-adopter question. When you understand the system - transport, power, rooftop solar, storage, pricing, standards - being “late” doesn’t just mean you miss out on a nicer car. It means you miss out on a cheaper household, a stronger grid, and a national advantage that Australia's perfectly built to seize.

We have sun. We have rooftops. We have suburbs. We have the distances. We have a grid under pressure. And we have households already behaving like mini power stations.

We’re practically made for this.

So yes, I was an innovator and early adopter on EVs. Now I’m keen to be an innovator on V2G. Not because it’s trendy, but because it’s the next logical step in rewiring how Australia moves and powers itself.

And like colour TV: once you’ve seen what’s possible, you don’t go back.

The S curve for EVs.