Episode 81; Deep Dive: Electric B-Doubles, EV Charging Fixes, Battery Health & Honda Super-One

Australia’s EV transition is moving well beyond passenger cars and simple questions about driving range.

In Episode 81 of Plugged In Australia, we take a deep dive into Coles putting electric prime movers to work pulling B-double freight in New South Wales, and examine the much harder question of whether battery-electric trucks can match diesel for payload, uptime, charging flexibility and whole-of-life productivity.

We also unpack the NSW parliamentary inquiry into EV charging infrastructure and its 18 recommendations covering apartment charging, charger reliability, regional infrastructure, kerbside charging, electricity networks and the enormous challenge of preparing for electric heavy vehicles.

Then we head to Victoria, where a new 34-page apartment-charging guide provides one of the most practical roadmaps yet for owners corporations trying to introduce EV charging. We look at EV backbones, dynamic load management, Level 1 versus Level 2 charging, billing, insurance, fire risk, legal approvals and who should actually pay.

China’s new battery-durability standard also gets the Deep Dive treatment. We explain the difference between State of Charge and State of Certified Energy, why owners being able to see battery-health information matters, the new durability benchmarks extending to 10 years or 200,000 kilometres, and why Australia may eventually need a similar system for its growing used-EV market.

Finally, Honda’s tiny Super-One is coming to Australia from $36,900 drive-away. We compare it in detail with the considerably cheaper BYD Atto 1 to work out exactly what buyers are getting for the extra money — and whether Honda can sell personality, lightweight engineering and driving character where the numbers alone struggle to make the case.

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
0:56 Coles puts electric B-doubles to work
14:19 NSW report calls for better EV charging
33:15 Victorian Apartment charging
1:09:25 China Standardises EV Battery Health Reporting
1:33:09 Honda Super 1 VS BYD Atto 1
1:52:49 Outro

Disclaimer:

All specifications, pricing, and information discussed in this episode were correct at the time of recording. The electric vehicle market moves quickly, so we recommend you always check the latest details directly with manufacturers, dealers, or official sources.

This podcast provides general news and information only, based on publicly available sources and Australian Consumer Law guidelines. It is not legal, financial, or professional advice. For advice specific to your situation, please contact the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) or seek independent professional guidance.

Plugged in Australia and its hosts are not responsible for any decisions, misunderstandings, or purchases made based on the content of this show.

Sourcing & Transparency

At Plugged in Australia, all our stories are sourced from publicly available news articles and reports. We do not receive any advance information or briefings from brands or manufacturers.

Any analysis or opinions we share are based solely on this public information.

Our main sources include (though we also use many others, and they vary by episode):

• https://www.carsales.com.au/
• https://www.carexpert.com.au/
• https://thedriven.io/
• https://www.carsguide.com.au
• https://autotalk.com.au
• https://www.carsguide.com.au
• https://evcentral.com.au
• https://www.drive.com.au

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

G'day, welcome to Plugged in Australia Deep Dive, episode 81 for Monday, the 10th of August, 2026. And before we get into it, a quick apology this week's well last week's actually Deep Dive is arriving a little later than planned, so thanks for bearing with me, a few bits and pieces along the way there. So today we're looking at some of the less flashy parts of the EV transition that could end up mattering enormously in Australia. We'll start with Coles putting electric prime movers to work on genuine B double freight in New South Wales, and what will actually determine whether they can match diesel productivity. Then we'll unpack the New South Wales Parliamentary Report into EV charging, Victoria's new apartment charging guide, and China's new standard for measuring and reporting long-term battery health. And finally, we'll take a close look at Honda's tiny Super One and whether its personality can justify the premium over cheaper electric city cars such as the BYD at 01. Let's get into it. Coles is taking its electric truck program into much more demanding territory, introducing three Volvo electric prime movers capable of pulling B double trailer combinations in New South Wales. The trucks are being deployed through Kohl's partnership with S2 Logistics and will transport products from suppliers into the supermarket group's distribution centre network. Now that distinction matters. Electric trucks carrying groceries from a distribution centre to suburban stores are no longer particularly unusual. Those routes are generally predictable, relatively short, and return the vehicle to the same depot where it can be charged overnight or in between shifts. Supplier to distribution centre freight can be a little bit more demanding operation. The trucks may spend longer on the road, carry heavier payloads, and need to meet much stricter booking windows so goods arrive at an automated distribution centre at exactly the right time. Then adding B double trailers increases the challenge again. A B double combines a prime mover with two trailers, an A and a B trailer, following significantly more freight to be moved by one driver and one power unit. That improves freight productivity, but it also increases total weight, rolling resistance, and energy consumption. The electric prime mover must move not only the freight and trailers, but also several tons of batteries carried on the truck itself. This is therefore a more meaningful test than putting an electric rigid truck on a short metropolitan delivery route. However, it is worth clarifying that this is not Coles' first use of an electric prime mover. Back in 2024, Coles and Linfox introduced a Volvo VH electric into the Victorian grocery delivery network. That truck operated from the Coles Distribution Centre at Laverton and was expected to complete as many as 25 store deliveries each week. Coles said it could travel up to 300 kilometres per charge, cover approximately 90,000 kilometers annually, and avoid the use of 25,000 litres of diesel each year. Now we don't have any official data from that trial, which is still ongoing, mind you. However, I reckon there's some indirect evidence that shows that Lin Fox was pretty satisfied with that trial, because in 2025 it committed to a major order for 30 Volvo Electric Prime movers. They got 29 FM and one FH electric, and Volvo described Lynn Fox's previous electric truck trials as successful. However, neither company published data showing how much that decision was influenced by the specific Coles FH operation. The New South Wales deployment is the next step. So instead of one truck completing store deliveries, Coles is now introducing three electric prime movers into inbound freight operations and testing them with B double combinations. Coles estimates each of these trucks will avoid more than 20,000 litres of diesel annually when compared with an equivalent diesel prime mover that is expected to eliminate 60 tons of tailpipe tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions from each truck per year. And uh at $2.40 a litre, which is a little bit under what it is at the moment, that's uh about $48,000 a year in diesel as well. So you know you can extrapolate that out over the uh over the three prime movers there, and that's uh almost $150,000. Now, while those are worthwhile reductions, the word tailpipe is important. An electric truck produces no exhaust emissions while driving, but its total environmental footprint will still depend on how the electricity is generated, the energy used to manufacture its battery, and how intensely the truck is operated. Cole's automated distribution centre at Kemp's Creek in Western Sydney has a rooftop solar installation rated at 3.5 megawatts. That creates an obvious opportunity to use locally generated energy for at least part of the charging operation. However, the information released so far does not say whether the trucks will charge directly from that solar, how much charging infrastructure has been installed, what power the charges can provide, or whether battery storage will be used to reduce grid demand. Those details will eventually determine how clean and cost-effective the project really is. Charging three electric prime movers is very different from plugging three passenger cars into the wall box. A heavy electric truck can carry several hundred kilowatt hours of battery capacity. If all three return at a similar time and need to be charged quickly for another shift, their combined electricity demand would be substantial. The operator must therefore coordinate truck arrival times, driver brakes, trailer movements, and charger availability. The ideal electric freight task is not necessarily the shortest route. It's the most predictable route. A truck that reliably travels the same 200 or 250 km each day and then sits at a depot for eight hours might be easier to electrify than one only doing 150km but operating continuously across several shifts, which is very, very common. The most important information from this real trial will be the energy consumption when pulling two loaded trailers. Range figures published for electric trucks are normally going to be affected by speed, total mass, topography, weather, aerodynamic drag, and the amount of energy used by auxiliary systems and things like refrigeration. A B double travelling at motorway speed will use considerably more energy than a single trailer truck operating slowly through an urban area. Refrigerated freight introduces another variable because cooling equipment requires energy when the truck is stationary. Kohl's has not disclosed the exact routes, expected daily kilometres, average payloads, or whether the trailers used in this development will require electric refrigeration. It's also not confirmed the exact Volvo model, battery configuration or charging speed. They didn't give us much, did they? That means we should not simply attach the specification of one particular Volvo FH or FM electric to these trucks. At present, not confirmed. Volvo's latest Australian heavy electric range provides an indication of what is now technically possible. The new generation FH, FM, and FMX electric models can be configured with a claimed range of up to 400km, maximum output as much as 540 kilowatts, or just over 700 horsepower in the old money, and gross combination weight capability reaching 65 tonne in suitable configurations. They can use 350 kilowatt CCS charging, with Volvo claiming 20 to 80% charging time of about 60 minutes under appropriate conditions. But whether the Kohl's trucks use that new drive line, the earlier electric platform, or a specific configuration developed for this operation hasn't been stated. That missing information is pretty important because payload's one of the biggest commercial questions surrounding battery electric trucks. The battery is going to add weight to the prime mover. And unless regulations provide additional mass allowance, every extra ton the truck can potentially remove a ton of paying freight. A supermarket or logistics company might tolerate that loss on light but bulky goods where the trailer runs out of physical space before reaching their illegal weight limit. It's much harder to accept when carrying dense products such as things like bottled drinks, canned goods, or bulk ingredients. New South Wales has recently introduced an updated Zero Emissions Heavy Vehicle Notice that provides qualifying battery, electric, and hydrogen heavy vehicles with exemptions from certain mass requirements. The arrangements include eligible B doubles operating on approved networks. It's an important regulatory change because it recognises that zero emission trucks generally weigh more than their diesel equivalents. It does not remove every axle or road access restriction, and operators must still comply with the applicable network and vehicle conditions, but it helps prevent the battery from consuming as much of the truck's commercially useful payload. The financial case will also depend on far more than the diesel saved. Electric prime movers generally cost considerably more to purchase than equivalent diesel trucks. The operator may need to fund high-powered charges, electrical upgrades, switchboards, civil works, and potentially on-site battery storage. Against that, the higher initial cost, electricity can be cheaper than diesel, and the electric drivetrain has much fewer moving parts. No engine oil, no exhaust after-treatment system, like you know, your ad blue, there's no diesel particulate filter, no fuel injection system, or conventional multi-speed diesel powertrain requiring the same type of servicing. Regen braking can also reduce wear on the foundation brakes, particularly on routes involving frequent slowing or downhill sections. So obviously, most of those diesel trucks have got either a jake brake or an exhaust brake, and they the jakes especially will work very well, but you're not really getting anything back for that. Whether as in regen, you're going to put some energy back in the brakes there, so that's good. Driver experience may provide another benefit. Electric trucks produce their maximum torque immediately, accelerate smoothly, and generate much less vibration, especially at low speeds. Now that can improve conditions for drivers and workers around loading docks, while reducing noise for nearby residents during early morning or overnight operations. But none of those advantages matter if the truck misses delivery windows, requires an additional driver shift because it's charging or forces Coals to operate more vehicles to move the same amount of freight. That's not going to happen. That's why this trial should not be judged purely through its emissions announcement. The real test is whether the electric trucks can deliver the same freight reliability and productivity as diesel. Coals will need to measure energy consumption per kilometer, but also energy consumption per ton of freight moved. It will need to track charger utilization, maintenance downtime, battery performance, payload restrictions, and the effect of hot weather and cold weather on both the cooling and refrigerated trailers. And the company will also need to know how the trucks perform when the planned schedule falls apart. A predictable route may work effectively and perfectly on a normal day. The harder question is what happens when a supplier is late? A loading dock is unavailable, traffic delays, you know, the return trip on a or a truck drives at the depot with less charge than expected. And tell you what, that can happen all the time. As you know, I deal with trucks all the time on a daily basis, and you've got a delivery at 7 o'clock in the morning, and uh that person is about 10 minutes longer than you expected, it has a compounding effect through the rest of your day, to the point where someone that's supposed to get a delivery sort of, you know, between 12 and 2, and all of a sudden it's 2.30 or 3 o'clock because that 10 minutes, and then oh, another five minutes here, and so that can make a huge difference. There's also an important limit to what this trial proves. Three trucks operating on selected New South Wales routes do not demonstrate that every B double task in Australia can be electrified today. They don't solve the challenge of a truck travelling in a state around the clock where stopping for an hour to charge can affect both driver productivity and trailer scheduling. Public charging infrastructure designed for B doubles also remains extremely limited. I don't really know. I think maybe the twin servos at uh Eastern Creek, they've got some pull-through charges. I'm not sure you could get a double into those charges. I reckon you could get a semi in there, but so that's that's that's a really difficult one there. The charger may be powerful enough, but the site must also have enough physical space for a prime mover and two trailers to enter, maneuver and leave without being uncoupled. Telling a driver to uncouple their trailer when they absolutely do not have to. Yes, that's not going to go down well. Go like I say, go down like a lead balloon. The coals operation is more likely to succeed because it's very controlled. The routes can be selected around the vehicle, charging can be installed at known locations, the operator knows what freight is being moved and when the truck needs to return. That doesn't make the project less valuable, just demonstrates the sensible way to begin electrifying heavy transport, identifying the routes where the technology already fits rather than forcing it into every task. The first electric trucks will not replace every diesel prime mover. They will replace diesel on a repeatable depot-to-depot and return to base operations where the daily distance, load and charging window are understood. And then as battery capacity, charging speed, and public truck charging infrastructure improve, the number of suitable routes will be expanded. For Coals, the three new prime movers are therefore less about proving that an electric truck can physically pull two trailers. We already know it can do that. The important question is whether it can pull those trailers day after day, meet every freight window, carry enough payload, and deliver a competitive whole of life cost. If the answer is yes, the significance extends well beyond three trucks. Large supermarket networks generate enormous volumes of predictable freight. Even partial electrification across those operations would remove millions of litres of diesel consumption over time. This remains obviously a very small trial, but moving electric prime movers into genuine B double work makes it one of the more commercially relevant heavy EV vehicle projects currently operating in Australia. New South Wales Parliamentary Committee has released a substantial report into EV charging infrastructure, and while this is not the kind of story that produces a dramatic headline, it may end up being one of the more important charging stories of the year, especially for New South Wales. The report contains 18 recommendations, but these are recommendations rather than new laws that have already taken effect. And that distinction is important. Nothing in this report instantly changes the rules for apartment buildings, public charges, electricity networks, or freight corridors overnight. What it does do, however, is identify where the real bottlenecks are and where policymakers believe the state should focus next. And importantly, the committee has not looked at charging as just a metropolitan passenger car issue. This inquiry has been running since March of 2025. It involved hearings in Sydney, Dubbo and Beagre, and it looked at city charging, regional access, apartment buildings, public housing, network connections, charger uptime, heavy vehicles, competition issues, and workforce shortages. So this is a much broader than simply asking whether there are enough charging stations on a map. In effect, the committee is arguing that the next stage of EV charging in New South Wales is not just building more chargers. It's about building a charging system that is practical, reliable, fairly priced, regionally accessible, and actually capable of supporting the way Australians use vehicles. And that gives us a few distinctive parts to unpack. One of the clearest findings in the report is that home charging becomes much harder once you have moved beyond detached houses. That is pretty obvious to anyone who has followed this issue, but it's still one of the most important barriers to full EV adoption. If you own a detached house, the process is relatively straightforward. You arrange an electrician, make sure your switchboard and wiring can support the charger, and install either a dedicated wall box or another approved charging solution. Once you move into strata apartments, unit blocks, older residential buildings, or public housing, everything becomes much more complicated. The resident may own the car, but they often do not control the switchboard, the common property, the cable routes, the parking area or the approval process. Even if the resident owns the parking space itself, the electricity infrastructure serving that space usually sits within a shared building system. That means every charging installation can become a legal, technical, and financial discussion rather than a simple electrical job. This is why apartment charging keeps coming up in EV policy. Home charging is one of the biggest practical advantages of EV ownership. It is cheaper than most public charging, it's definitely more convenient, and it removes the need to go looking for a charger during the week. If apartment residents are locked out of that advantage, the EV ownership risks becoming disproportionately easier for people in detached housing than for people in high density living. The committee appears to recognise that. Its recommendations point towards better support for charging installation in new and existing apartment buildings as well as public housing. That matters because they are not identical problems. New apartment buildings can be designed to be EV ready from the get-go. That means spare switchboard capacity, cable pathways, conduit allowances, charger locations, and the planning assumptions needed to support future demand. Retrofitting an older strata building is far harder and much more expensive. A building may need things like switchboard upgrades, load management systems, new metering arrangements, and approval processes that can take months. There is also the issue of fairness. So if one owner wants a charger now, should everyone in the building help pay for a shared backbone system? Should that owner fund only their connection? Or should the building install a scalable shared solution so the early adopters do not use up all the easy cable routes and capacity before everyone gets a chance? Those are not small administrative details. They are the difference between a workable long-term solution and a building that ends up with a mess of ad hoc private installations. It kind of reminds me of images where you see people who go to Bali and their uh their power lines there, and there's just every everybody's just kind of plugged into the main line and it just looks like an absolute bird's nest. That's kind of the image that I get in my head. And then public housing adds another layer again. Residents there may have less financial flexibility to pay for installation. However, they should not be excluded from EV access if governments are serious about transport electrification becoming mainstream rather than niche. So when the report calls for more support in apartments and public housing, it is recognising that the market on its own may not solve the problem neatly. And if that problem remains unresolved, New South Wales could end up with a charging network that works well for homeowners while leaving a large portion of the population relying on public charging even for routine weekly use. Another major theme in the report is that installed charges are not the same thing as usable charges. That may sound obvious, but the public conversation around charging still tends to focus on counts. How many charges have been funded, how many sites have opened, how many plugs are on a map. Those figures matter, but they can also create false sense of progress. The infrastructure exists on paper but not in any practical sense. That's why the report pushes for minimum uptime requirements and clearly clearer rather pricing transparency. Now uptown uptime may sound like a technical metric, but for drivers it is one of the most important indicators of whether a network can be trusted. A public charging site with poor reliability forces drivers to build in contingency plans. They may need to arrive with extra battery reserve, identify backup charges, or detour to avoid the risk of a failed session. That is inconvenient in a city and potentially much worse in regional areas where the next viable charger may be a long way away. For people who do not own an EV, charger reliability is often underestimated. Petrol drivers do not usually think about whether a servo will simply fail to dispense fuel when they arrive, they take that reliability for granted. The EV sector does not yet enjoy the same level of universal trust, and every broken charger reinforces the perception that public charging is a gamble. The same goes for pricing. One of the frustrations with public charging in Australia is that the pricing can be very inconsistent, difficult to compare, and sometimes unclear until the session is already underway. Drivers may see pricing presented in cents per kilowatt hour, per minute, or a combination of both. There may be idle fees, session fees, or membership differences layered on top. And unlike a servo where the main number is usually displayed prominently on a sign visible from the road, many EV charging prices are only discovered once the driver is already parked at the charger or inside an app. The committee is right to focus on this. Transparency matters because the driver should be able to decide before plugging in whether the charge represents good value or whether another charger nearby is cheaper and what the session is likely to cost. That is especially important for apartment residents or other drivers who depend more heavily on public charging. If charging is hard to interpret or reliability remains patchy, then adding more pins to the map does not fully solve the real world experience. The state does not just need more charges, it needs charges that are dependable enough to become ordinary infrastructure rather than the specialized workaround. Regional charging is another area. Area where the market logic becomes a little more complicated. In dense urban areas, the commercial case for installing charges is easier to make. More vehicles pass through, utilization is likely to be higher, and there are often more businesses able to justify hosting charging as part of a retail or convenience model. Regional and rural areas are different. The number of EVs may still be lower, the distances between towns are greater, and utilization can remain modest for some time. Now that creates a classic infrastructure problem. A site may not look commercially attractive today, but without it, drivers remain less willing to travel through the area or buy an EV in the first place. In other words, the infrastructure is needed before the demand fully appears. That makes regional charging partly a public interest issue rather than something that can be left entirely to immediate private returns. The report seems to recognise this by calling for better planning, signage, and financial support for public charging in regional areas, including consideration of places like petrol stations and truck stops. Well that makes sense. A charger in regional Australia is not just a piece of hardware, it's a part of a travel chain. Drivers need to know it's there, they need confidence it will work, and ideally it should be located somewhere sensible for a real stop, somewhere with amenities, shelter, lighting, and enough space to access the site easily. This becomes even more important because regional charging often has to serve different kinds of users. There are local residents, tourists, inner city travellers, and people hauling trailers or carrying heavy loads. A charger that technically exists but is placed in a cramped car park, poorly signed or difficult to access with a caravan, is far less useful than the statistics suggest. There is also the broader equity issue there. If charging remains dense in Sydney, Newcastle, in the Gong but sparse further inland, then the transition risks becoming geographically uneven. Regional residents often travel longer distances and may actually have more reason to value the lower running costs of electrified transport. However, they are also more exposed to the weakness of a thin charging network. That is why regional policy needs to be judged a little bit differently. The right question is not simply whether every charger is commercially profitable today. The right question is whether the network is sufficiently complete to allow normal use across the state. In that sense, regional charging starts looking a little more like other enabling infrastructure. Governments do not usually wait for a remote road, bridge, or electricity line to prove immediate commercial profitability in isolation before deciding it is necessary. Charging may need to be viewed through a similar lens, at least in some black spot areas. One of the more interesting and potentially controversial issues raised around this broader charging conversation is the question of who should actually be allowed to build and own public charging infrastructure. This is where the debate gets much more serious than simply saying more charges are good. In New South Wales, electricity distribution businesses such as Osgrid, Endeavour Energy, and Essential Energy have been exploring very large curbside or pole-mounted charging programs. The numbers being discussed are substantial, with the potential for many thousands of charges. On one level, that sounds attractive. The poles already exist, the electricity network is already there, and curbside charging could be extremely useful for people without off-street parking. For apartment residents and terrace house residents in particular, pole chargers could help close the gap between home charging access and public street access. However, the controversy is about market structure and cost recovery. Distribution businesses are regulated monopolies. Customers cannot simply choose a competing local poles and wires operator. Those networks recover costs through regulated charges that ultimately feed into everyone's electricity bills. So the critical question is whether those same network businesses should be allowed to own and operate charging infrastructure that competes with private charging companies. Private operators argue that if regulated monopoly networks are allowed into the market too aggressively, they may be able to crowd out private investment. A network business may enjoy lower financing costs, existing infrastructure access, and the ability to spread some costs across a regulated customer base. A private company has to justify each installation through a commercial return. That creates a bit of an uneven playing field. On the other hand, supporters of broad network involvement would argue that curbside charging, especially in lower utilization or difficult locations, may not emerge fast enough if left purely to private operators. They may also argue that the distribution networks are already well placed to understand local electricity constraints, connection issues, and optimal site locations. This is why ring fencing rules matter. Ring fencing is meant to prevent regulated network monopolies from unfairly favouring their own competitive business. If a distribution network both owns the poles and wires and also wants to compete in EV charging, there has to be a serious question about whether private rivals are receiving genuinely equal treatment. Can they get the same connection information? Are the time frames and costs the same? Is the network using monopoly infrastructure in a way that gives its own charging business an advantage? These are not ideological questions, they go directly to the shape of the changing market. Do we want curbside charging to become something like a utility service, rolled out broadly with some regulated involvement, or do we want it to remain primarily a competitive private market, even if it means some locations take longer to get connected? The report's significance here is that it does not treat the charger rollout as just an engineering issue. It acknowledges that ownership models, competition rules, and network regulation all affect what gets built, where it gets built, and who pays. It's one of those issues that sounds bureaucratic until you realise it may determine whether drivers without driveways can get convenient charging near home at all. The report also looks beyond passenger vehicles, which is important because heavy vehicle charging is a completely different challenge. A public charger suitable for a passenger SUV or hatchback is not automatically useful for a medium rigid truck, let alone a prime mover. Freight vehicles need much more power, much more physical space, and a very different kind of site planning. A heavy truck cannot simply squeeze into a standard shopping centre charging bay. It may need drive-through access, space to maneuver, overhead clearance, and charging hardware that can deliver far more energy in a short enough window to remain commercially useful. Freight operations are less tolerant of downtime and delay. Family on a road trip may be irritated by a broken charger, but a logistics operator may be losing money by the minute if a truck misses a delivery window, sits in a queue, or requires an additional driver shift because the charging plan failed. And that's why heavy vehicle charging cannot be treated as a scaled-up version of passenger charging. It requires purpose-built freight corridors, depot charging strategies, and network planning that considers large power demands. The committee's attention to this issue is valuable because it recognises that electrifying transport is not just about private cars. Passenger EVs matter, but if governments are serious about emissions reduction, air quality and oil dependence, then commercial fleets and freight eventually have to be part of that conversation as well. The charging requirements for those vehicles will differ sharply depending on the task. A local delivery truck returning to a depot every night is one thing, a regional or interstate heavy vehicle is another. Some routes may suit depot-based charging, others may require enroute high-capacity charging infrastructure at track stops, freight hubs, or major logistics corridors. And this is where a lot of current public charger conversation starts to look too narrow. A map of passenger car fast charges does not tell you much about whether the state is preparing for electric freight. You can have strong growth in passenger EV infrastructure while still being almost nowhere on the infrastructure needed for trucks. For listeners thinking this is a distant issue, it's probably not. Even if most long-haul freight does not electrify immediately, the planning decisions need to begin early. Grid connections for major heavy charging sites can take time, land use needs to be identified, truck stop operators, logistics businesses, and energy providers need to understand what future demand may look like. In other words, heavy charging has the same lesson as regional charging. If you wait until the demand is already overwhelming, you're behind the eight ball. The final point is that the report is not self-executing. It does not create legal rights on its own. It does not automatically force apartment buildings to install charging, guarantee minimum uptime at every charger, or settle the network ownership question immediately. It is a parliamentary committee report with recommendations. What happens now is which of those recommendations are accepted and adopted, how quickly the government responds, and how they interact with the policies already underway. That includes the New South Wales government's existing $100 million 2026 EV strategy, which already includes measures aimed at regional charging black spots, curbside charging, and support for some heavier vehicle categories. So this report does not emerge into a vacuum. In some areas it may reinforce work already underway. In others, it may push the government to go further or act faster. The broader significance of the report is that it reflects a maturing discussion around EV infrastructure. A few years ago, a lot of the focus was simply on proving EVs were viable and getting an initial charging network off the ground. Now the focus is shifting towards the quality and the structure of that infrastructure. Is it reliable? Is it transparent? Does it work for apartment residents? Does it reach regional communities? Can the grid connections be delivered in a consistent and timely way? Is the market design fair? Can it eventually support trucks as well as cars? Those are harder questions than simply funding another round of charging sites. But they are also the questions that determine whether EV charging feels normal or fragile in day-to-day use. And this is probably the key takeaway from this report, I think. New South Wales does not just need more charging points. It needs a charging ecosystem that is easier to install, easier to connect, easier to trust, and easier to use. That means apartment residents need a clearer path to home charging. Regional communities need sensible coverage even when utilisation is initially lower. Public charges need to be working when people arrive and priced clearly enough that drivers can make informed decisions. Heavy transport needs to be considered now, not after passenger infrastructure is already mature, and governments need to decide whether network businesses should be passive facilitators of EV charging or active owners of it. None of that's flashy, but it's exactly the sort of detail that will determine whether the next phase of electrification feels seamless or frustrating. This report may not deliver instant change, but it identifies the practical issues EV drivers already notice and the structural issues policymakers can no longer ignore. And in that sense, it may end up being more useful than a much louder announcement about another handful of charges on a map. Alright, so going to delve deeper into the Victoria apartment charging guide, which is about how Strata can actually make that sort of thing work, because the Victorian government has released a detailed new guide explaining how owners corporations can plan, approve, and operate electric vehicle charging in apartment buildings. Now, this is not simply another document telling people to call an electrician and track a war box on. The guide runs for 34 pages, and we're going to read all 34 pages here no I'm not in checking. Uh with the much with much harder questions, whether the building has enough electrical capacity, who should pay for shared infrastructure, how individual users are billed, what approvals are required, how fire and insurance concerns can be handled, and how a system can expand as more residents buy electric vehicles. Those issues that really matter because home charging remains one of the biggest advantages of EV ownership. Someone living in a detached house can usually arrange for an electrician to install a charger or suitable outlet without requiring approval of dozens or potentially hundreds of other property owners. Apartment residents can face an entirely different situation. Their parking space may be privately owned, but the switchboard, electrical supply, cable pathways, and surrounding walls are often common property. The building may have limited spare electrical capacity. The person requesting the charger might be an owner, a tenant, or an investor acting for a tenant. And even when only one resident currently owns an EV, whatever is approved for the first installation can affect every resident who wants to charge later. The Victorian government says approximately one in four Victorians live in strata managed residential buildings that are not yet set up for EV charging. And that makes apartment charging more than a niche problem. If access to convenient home charging becomes limited, mainly to people who own detached house, a substantial part of the population will be placed at a disadvantage during the transition to electric vehicles. The most important message in the new guide is that owners corporations should stop treating each charger request as an isolated event. Instead, the building should develop an overall EV strategy. That does not necessarily mean installing a charger in every parking space tomorrow. It means establishing an agreed process for deciding whether, when and how EV charging should be supported. The strategy should identify the building's likely demand, technical constraints, funding model, approval process, building arrangements, and long-term responsibilities. It may recommend a complete building-wide system. It may recommend installing common infrastructure now and allowing individual owners to connect later. It may support a cheaper interim solution that can eventually be replaced. And in some buildings, it may conclude that installation should be deferred until the electrical infrastructure finances or level of demand changes. The guide is refreshingly clear that immediate installation is not always the correct answer. However, doing nothing indefinitely because the issue appears complicated is not a strategy either. It's the uh the ostrich strategy, just stick your head in the sand. Even when an owner's corporation decides not to proceed immediately, the guide recommends documenting why, identifying what circumstances would trigger another review, and avoiding decisions that make future charging harder or more expensive. The Victorian Guide divides the process into three connected frameworks technical, commercial, and legal. The technical framework determines what the building can safely support. The commercial framework decides on who pays, who owns the equipment, and how ongoing costs are recovered. The legal framework determines how the works can be approved, how common property is affected, and what records and compliance documents must be maintained. The three cannot really be separated. A solution may appear technically simple but allocate costs unfairly. A commercial provider may offer a low upfront cost while locking the building into expensive software, billing or maintenance fees. And a charger installed beside one resident's parking space may still require formal approval because the cable travels across common property or connects to shared electrical infrastructure. The guide therefore warns owners corporations against starting with a preferred charger brand or accepting the first sales proposal placed in front of the committee. The starting point should always be the building itself. For many apartment buildings, the preferred long-term solution will be what the guide calls an EV backbone. The backbone is the common electrical and communications infrastructure that allows chargers to be progressively connected across the car park. It can include upgrades to the main switchboard, dedicated EV distribution boards, circuits, cable trays, risers, communications equipments, and load management system. Does not necessarily include the individual war box or the final cable run from the shared backbone to a particular owner's parking space. That distinction becomes important when deciding who pays. The backbone creates a shared capability across the building. The individual charger directly serves one resident. By installing the backbone first, an owner's corporation does not need to purchase 100 chargers for 100 parking spaces when perhaps only five residents own EVs. It can prepare the electrical and cable pathways, then allow residents to connect as demand grows. That can avoid having the first few EV owners consume all of the available electrical capacity or occupy the easiest cable routes before other owners have an opportunity to connect. It can also prevent a car park ending up with a mixture of incompatible charges, separate private cables, and several billing platforms that cannot communicate with one another. However, a complete backbone is not automatically the best immediate solution for every building. A large underground car park with hundreds of spaces may justify substantial common infrastructure from the beginning. A block of six townhouses with simple above-ground parking may be able to meet its immediate requirements using several managed power outlets. The guide, therefore, allows several pathways. The building can install a full backbone, it can stage parts of the backbone as demand increases, it can undertake targeted initial work while preserving space and capacity for future expansion. It can also approve a temporary individual agreement under clearly defined conditions. Or it can defer installation. The important requirement is that an early solution should not prevent a fairer building-wide system from being installed later. That may mean an owner receiving temporary approval must agree to migrate to the eventual shared system at their own expense. Otherwise, the building risks creating stranded equipment or forcing rather later owners to pay for work that should have been coordinated from the beginning. The next step is proper electrical capacity assessment. The guide recommends using a registered electrical contractor or suitably qualified consultant to examine the incoming supply, the main switchboard, cable sizes, distribution boards, spare capacity, actual demand, and future building requirements. Larger buildings may need interval electricity data examined alongside real operating conditions. Looking only at theoretical rating of the building can be misleading. The building may have considerable unused capacity overnight when lifts, pumps, air conditioning and other common systems are consuming less electricity. Alternatively, a building that appears to have spare capacity on paper may experience short but significant demand peaks. The assessment should also consider future electrification beyond EV charging. An owner's corporation may later want to install heat pump hot water, rooftop solar, batteries, or electrify other common services. A charger system that consumes every remaining amp available could make those projects much more difficult. This is one of the strengths of approaching EV charging as building infrastructure rather than a collection of individual appliances. The investigation may also discover that the supposed technical barrier is not as serious as you first thought. At St. James apartments, an aging main switchboard and difficulty finding compatible components initially appeared to require a major replacement. The charging system was then designed so its main components could be uh it could continue being used if the switchboard was eventually replaced. That allowed the project to proceed in stages while reducing the risk of paying for infrastructure twice. The guide places enormous importance on load management. A load management system monitors how much electricity the building is using and adjusts EV charging so the combined demand remains within safe limits. That can mean restricting all charges to a fixed total output, scheduling charges at a certain time, rotating available power between connected vehicles, or dynamically changing each charger's output as the building's demand rises and falls. The aim is not necessarily to provide maximum charging power to every vehicle at once. Most cars will remain parked for many hours overnight. So a well-managed system can distribute the available energy during that period rather than designing the entire building around the unlikely scenario of every resident arriving home with an empty battery and demanding 7 kilowatts or immediately because they've got to go out in two hours. In a smaller building, the system might alternate power between four smart outlets. In a large apartment tower, a more sophisticated platform can continuously monitor the whole building and allocate power among dozens of chargers. Essential building equipment must take priority. If demand from lifts, pumps, boilers, and other services rise, charging can be reduced temporarily. The guide also says systems relying on cloud communications should have safe fallback settings. A lost internet connection should not result in chargers operating without limits or interfering with essential services. The charges also need to work with the building's billing and management platform. For managed level 2 charging, the guide specifies support from Open Charge Point Protocol, also known as OCPP, version 1.6 J or later version supported by the selected load management system. OCPP is intended to make communication between chargers and management platforms more open and reduce dependence on a single supplier. But an OCPP label alone does not guarantee. That every charger, billing platform, and load management feature will work together. The Owners Corporation still needs written confirmation of compatibility and should understand what functions are actually supported. A system may technically communicate with OCPP while some advanced billing, monitoring, or power management features remain proprietary. That becomes particularly important if the building wants to change service providers in five or ten years. The case studies in the guide demonstrate why this planning matters. At 50 Albert, real-time load management balanced charging demand against the building's total electricity use across two circuits. Now that allowed level two charging to be offered across all seven levels of the car park without replacing the main switchboard. The chosen approach reportedly reduced upfront costs by 25% and was projected to reduce the owners corporation's total cost of ownership by 40% over five years. At a small like Clifton Hill building, replacing the main switchboard and upgrading the electricity supply to support level two charging was estimated to cost 60 grand. Instead, the Owners Corporation spent about 10 grand installing supporting infrastructure and four smart general-purpose outlets. A cloud-based system rotates charging between the connected vehicles. That is much slower than giving every vehicle a dedicated 7 kilowatt war box, but it meant the building's immediate needs while leaving open the possibility of expanding or upgrading later. At 8 Murphy Street, the building had limited capacity and expensive demand peaks. It installed dedicated level 2 chargers controlled through real-time load management, allowing the system to operate within the available supply. The backbone was subsequently extended to every parking space at a cost of about $870 per space. Only around 14% of owners paid to connect immediately. That is a useful example because it separates preparing the building from forcing every resident to purchase equipment they do not yet need. At TripTech apartments, the Owners Corporation installed cable pathways and other backbone components through the car park, despite EV ownership being low at the time. The system used an existing 250 amp circuit and dynamic load management that allowed residents to connect progressively without the first owners occupying all the useful cable pathways. Then comes the question of level 1 or level 2. The guide does not insist that every building use a dedicated war boxes. It divides apartment charging broadly into level 1 and level 2 systems. Level 1 charging is quite slow, but slow does not necessarily mean useless. A car connected for 10 hours at 1.8 kW can receive approximately 18 kWh before charging losses. Depending on the vehicle, that could replace roughly 80 to 120 kilometres of everyday driving. For an owner whose vehicle remains parked overnight and travels only moderate daily distances, that may be entirely adequate. A smart outlet can meter the electricity, schedule charging, and rotate the supply between users. It may therefore provide a proportionate solution in a small building where demand remains low. I think though, if you're going to do that, you're better off getting a 15 amp or even a 20 amp outlet. You can get those. Probably the 15 is better because there's a lot more charges out there in the market. So if you've got that going there at about 3.5 kilowatts, then you're going to be adding, you know, anywhere from 20 to 25 kilometers of range for something like an Ado3. So if you're there overnight, that's you know 250 Ks, that's a fair, fair chunk of uh plug of charging there. So you you would you would be able to survive quite comfortably on a 15 amp plug in that scenario. Now obviously there's going to be edge cases that's not going to work, but for the vast majority of people are not driving 200km round trip to go to work, most people. And then we move on to a dedicated level two charger, which can supply obviously much more energy during the same period and offers better communication with sophisticated load management systems. That makes it more suitable where vehicles have larger daily energy requirements, parking periods are shorter, and many residents need to charge simultaneously. The guide provides indicative recommendations based on charging size. For Tier 1 buildings with more than 100 lots, it generally points towards managed level 2 charging with dynamic load management. For Tier 2 buildings with between 51 and 100 lots, managed level 2 is again the likely long-term direction, although managed level 1 outlets may serve as an interim option while demand remains low. And T3 covers buildings between 10 and 50 lots, and depending on the number of users and the parking arrangement, either level 1 or level 2 may be appropriate. And T4 covers small schemes with 3 to 9 lots. Now managed level 1 may be enough, although dedicated EV charges remain an option when the electrical infrastructure and owner's requirements justify them. These are not binding rules. A 20-lot building with unusually high demand might need more capable systems than a 70-lot building where only a few residents drive regularly. If you've got a building that's an over 50s building, for example, you're going to have a much higher proportion of retirees who just don't necessarily need to drive as much. They're not going to work every day, they're going to be home during the day a lot more. And so, you know, you're able to move and distribute that sort of load over the day. The correct solution comes from the building assessment, not simply the number of apartments. And then the question, the almighty question of who pays. The commercial section deals with the issue most likely to cause disagreement. Who pays for infrastructure when many residents do not currently own an EV. Under Victoria's Owners Corporation Act, the guide applies what it calls the benefit principle. In simple terms, when everyone benefits, everyone can contribute. When only some owners benefit, those owners should pay more. The guide divides EV charging costs into three broad categories. First is the shared EV backbone. Because upgrades to the switchboard, cable trays, distribution boards, and communications and load management systems create a building-wide capacity, those costs may be funded by all owners according to their lot liability. Second are the private components. An individual owner will generally pay for their own charger the final cable from the shared backbone to their parking space and the maintenance for that private equipment. And third is the electricity actually consumed. That should be paid by the user through an approved metering and billing arrangement. At TripTech apartments, the shared backbone costs approximately $500 per parking space and was funded across the owner's corporation. Residents choosing to connect their then paid rather for their own charger and final cable. Electricity and ongoing operating costs were recovered from the people using the system. The structure aims to prevent residents without an EV subsidizing another owner's charging while recognising that common infrastructure can benefit the building more broadly. You know, it's going to be a selling point, I would think. It increases the value. You can very confidently say, well, we if you've got an EV, you're EV ready. And obviously, somebody who drives electric and is looking at your building and your apartment and it's EV ready to go, and looking at another one that's not, well, guess what? You're definitely got a big tick next to your name on that one. The guide lists several potential funding methods. The onus corporation may use money from an approved maintenance fund, accumulated surplus funds, the annual budget, or just ordinary fees. It may raise a special levy or borrow money subject to required approvals. It may also enter into a third-party funding or service arrangement, but the guide repeatedly warns against apparently cheap offers that create long contracts, high recurring charges, limited equipment choice, or difficult exit conditions. A provider may offer to install equipment at little or no upfront cost because it expects to recover money through charging margins, platform subscriptions, or long-term exclusivity. That does not automatically make the offer bad. It means the committee must calculate the whole of life cost and understand who owns the equipment, who owns the usage data, what happens if the provider fails, and whether the building can switch platforms without replacing every charger. Very similar, if not identical, to an embedded network. And anybody who is in an apartment or a large sort of uh townhouse sort of arrangement will know, well potentially know all about an embedded network. It's just where there's a single gate meter coming into the property and powers bought in bulk from the main grid through a single, as I said, single meter, and then every individual apartment uses submeters managed by an exempt seller rather than standard authorized retail provider. And uh every resident is automatically enrolled with that designated provider, and it is very hard, if not impossible, to get out of that and to sign up with your own provider. Because in the beginning, when the developer built the place, uh they did a deal with one of these embedded networks, and so uh the that embedded network, that uh supplier rather, that central energy infrastructure was either heavily subsidized or was installed for free, quote unquote free. And so that company came in and did all the electrical installations. So they came in, they ran the mains, they did the switchboard, they ran all the cables to the individual units, they did all of that because they knew that they've got a 10-year or whatever the year period is that's locked that owner's corporation in to buying electricity from them. Some of them do it with the gas as well for those uh still connecting gas up as well. So it's very much an embedded network, and uh 99 times out of a hundred, if not a hundred times out of a hundred, it is more expensive in the long run. So it's important to read the fine print and get the calculator or the spreadsheet out. Love me a good spreadsheet. Then we move on to the billing, and it can't be a guess, you can't just guesstimate the billing. The guide is particularly clear about electricity billing. A renter or owner can be only be charged for electricity use when the use is separately measured. A standard 10 amp outlet is not itself a separate meter. Now, in Victoria, an owners corporation cannot simply approve a flat annual charge, such as $100 a year, and allow residents to use an unmetered common property outlet. The amount recovered must be based on actual measured consumption through a compliant arrangement. The billing system can also recover reasonable associated expenses such as metering, platform, and administration costs. However, the guide says apartment charging should normally operate as transparent cost recovery rather than a profit-making business for the owners corporation. And that's an important distinction. The person charging should not receive free electricity at everyone else's expense, but the owners corporation should not use its control over the parking area to improve impose rather arbitrary markups. That makes home charging unnecessarily expensive. Clear reporting is essential. Users should be able to understand the electricity rate, platform fees, and other charges. The owners corp should be able to reconcile the money collected with its common electricity account, and the contract should explain what happens when prices change, payments fail, or a resident moves out. And then there's the legal framework, and in this guide is specifically for Victoria. Buildings in New South Wales, Queensland, and other jurisdictions can't just copy and paste the voting and approval rules word for word. Although the broad lesson applies naturally. Deciding that EV charging is a good idea does not remove the need to identify what is private property, what is common property, and what is and which body rather has authority to approve the work. Now in Victoria, some charging projects can be approved through ordinary owners corporation decision making. A special resolution may be required when a proposal significantly changes the use or appearance of common property, gives an owner exclusive use of common property, or involves work requiring planning or building approval. Using visitor parking for individual EV charging is one example that may require a special resolution and possibly planning advice. Visitor spaces can also create practical problems around reservations, access, time limits and building. The guide gives an example from Clifton Hill, where outlets from a disused common property laundry were relocated to individual car spaces for exclusive charging. Because that significantly changed how the common property was being used, the owners approved the change through a special resolution. The specific work and funding were then approved through ordinary processes. At 8 Murphy Street, legal advice suggested an ordinary resolution would have been sufficient for the building wide backbone. The committee nevertheless pursued a special resolution because there was opposition among owners and it wanted a broader mandate. That reduced likelihood of the project later being challenged. The guide also recommends carefully documenting every decision. Records should include the resolution, voting result, professional advice, approved scope, funding allocation, risk controls, and who owns and maintains each part of the system. After installation, the owners corporation should retain the certificate of electrical safety, updated electrical diagrams, and records of any switchboard or load management changes. The record matters because committee members, building managers, and service providers will change over time. A system that depends entirely on one enthusiastic committee member remembering how it all works is likely to cause you some dramas down the track. Then there's the insurance. So fire concerns are likely to become one of the most contentious parts of any apartment charging decision. You're gonna get that one person who's like, oh, it's gonna catch fire, it's gonna blow us all up. A little bit of info on that part. EV FireSafe has verified 511 passenger EV traction battery fires globally between 2010 and June of 2024. The International Energy Agency estimated there are around 40 million electric cars on the road by the end of 2023. Dividing those figures gives a crude ratio of approximately 0.0013%, or one verified battery fire for every 78,000 EVs. However, shouldn't be treated as a precise lifetime risk because it compares fires accumulated over 14 years with today's much larger EV population, and EV Safe says its database is not exhaustive. There is no equivalent global database for petrol and diesel vehicles, but official Swedish figures provide a more useful annual comparison. So during 2024, 40 electric or electric hybrid passenger vehicles were involved in fires out of approximately 881,000 registered vehicles, and that is at a rate of 0.0045%. The implied rate for petrol, diesel and other combustion vehicles was roughly 0.075%. So it was around 16 times higher. The figures are not perfectly like for like because the broader total includes arson, but they strongly suggest and show that EV fires occur considerably less frequently. The important qualification is that when an EV traction battery does enter thermal runaway, the incident can be much more complicated for emergency responders to manage. So it's not a subject to not talk about, but it is also not something that should be fear-mongered because it is much more likely that a combustion car is going to catch fire than an EV. So, with that said, the report states that an EV battery fire can behave differently from a petrol or diesel vehicle fire and may require different emergency response arrangements. However, it also says risk should be assessed proportionally. Research prepared for the Australian Building Codes Board also indicates that compliant charging equipment is not expected to cause a significant increase in car park fire safety or severity. Connecting a normally operating EV to compliant equipment installed by a qualified person does not automatically increase the likelihood of a battery fire. The answer is therefore not to pretend that the risk is zero, but nor is it reasonable to treat the presence of any EV charger as an unacceptable threat. The building should use compliant equipment, qualified installers, appropriate protective devices, clear signage, maintenance procedures, and documented emergency information. The guide recommends contacting the building's insurer or broker before the system is installed rather than waiting until renewal. An example from TripTech Apartments again is that the owners corporation developed a risk management plan based partly on the Australian Building Code Board's guidance. Controls included a trip shunt capable of isolating the charging system, updated building plans, signage, and safer charging rules. Providing that information allowed the insurer to assess the system as part of the building's wider risk profile instead of treating it as an unknown modification. Charging equipment must also avoid blocking stairs, emergency access routes, evacuation paths, or essential safety equipment. Where a building has unusual fire safety concerns, the guide recommends obtaining advice from a registered building surveyor or fire safety practitioner. The guide also addresses claims that EVs are too heavy for multi-story car parks. Its position is that vehicles' weight should not generally be used as a blanket reason to prevent charging. Many EVs are heavier than directly comparable petrol cars, but modern diesel SUVs, dual cab buttes, and other large vehicles can be equally heavy or even heavier. The important question is the condition and design of the particular car park. A deteriorated older structure, posted load restriction, or mechanical car stacker may require specialist advice. The guide specifically recommends further investigation for older car parks, particularly those constructed before 1969, where there is uncertainty about structural condition or capacity. Car stackers present additional complications. Some manufacturers offer charging equipment designed for stackers, but the moving platform, cable route, vehicle weight limits, emergency access, and fire consideration may make installations much more complex. In some buildings, providing a shared charging area away from the stackers may be more practical. The guide does not say charging on stackers is impossible. It says the equipment manufacturer and appropriate technical specialists should be consulted before it is approved. The guide briefly considers bidirectional charging. Its conclusion is that vehicle to grid is not yet a viable standard option for most apartment buildings, and that's pretty realistic. Electricity market rules, export limits, billing, ownership of the exported energy, and the way any financial benefit is distributed. A resident could also sell their apartment, replace the vehicle, or opt out of the program completely. The building would need to understand who is responsible for equipment, maintenance, and what happens when the charger is supporting the grid, but the owner needs to go for a drive. None of these issues makes V to G impossible, but an owner's corporation currently struggling to agree on basic overnight charging probably shouldn't begin by designing a virtual power plant. Getting safe, metered, and scalable one-way charging into residents' parking spaces is much more important. The guide dedicates several pages to communication and owner surveys. That might sound a little bit excessive, but poorly designed surveys can create misleading results. Asking whether residents support EV charging in principle isn't the same as measuring committed demand. Someone may support EV infrastructure while having absolutely no intention of paying for a connection. The guide recommends asking whether owners would install a charger or final connection within a realistic period, such as sort of the next 12 months, particularly once an estimated cost is provided. It also recommends testing views on levies, insurance, safety, property value, and rental appeal. Investor owners should be included because they may view charging as a feature that helps attract or retain tenants, even when they do not personally own an EV. The survey should come after owners have been given enough information to understand all the options. Sending out a vague question before technical or cost information is available can produce a result driven mainly by assumptions and And misinformation. Several successful case studies also relied on a project champion. That may be a committee member or working group prepared to coordinate quotes, professional advice, communication, and record keeping. The project champion shouldn't make the technical decisions alone. Their job is to keep the process sort of humming along and ensure that specialist advice reaches owners in a form they can understand. So the release of this guide doesn't magically make apartment charging easy, doesn't provide every owner's corporation with the money to upgrade its switchboard, doesn't force residents who oppose the project to vote for it. It doesn't guarantee that a building with difficult parking arrangements or severely constrained electrical infrastructure will find an inexpensive solution, and it does not create one national set of strata laws. The legal material is written for Victoria and will need to be adapted in other states. But the document does remove one common excuse that apartment charging is too unfamiliar or complicated for an owner's corporation to begin investigating. The guide offers a practical order of operations, assesses the entire building rather than just one parking space. Decide whether a backbone, staged installation, smart outlet, or temporary solution is appropriate. Use load management before assuming an expensive supply upgrade is unavoidable. Separate shared infrastructure for private equipment. Confirm the correct legal approvals. Compare providers on whole of life cost rather than headline installation price. Document the safety controls and speak with the insurer early. Most importantly, do not allow the first charger installed in the car park to determine what everyone else can do for the next 20 years. New apartment buildings in Victoria are already subject to requirements intended to make future EV charging easier, including space for switchboards and charging infrastructure serving all important parking spaces. The far harder problem is the enormous stock of existing buildings designed before mass EV adoption was even thought about. Those buildings will not all use the same solution. Some are going to install 7 kilowatt chargers across every level. Some will work in with four smart outlets sharing a modest circuit. Others will install cable trays and distribution boards now, then wait for residents to purchase their own chargers. Success should not be measured by whether every parking space receives maximum power immediately. It should be measured by whether residents can access enough energy for daily driving, whether the system remains safe and fair, and whether it can expand without throwing away the original investment. The Victorian Guide recognizes that apartment charging is not primarily a charger problem. The technology to charge a car is pretty straightforward. The difficult part is coordinating shared electrical capacity, shared property, shared costs, and the competing priorities of many different owners. That is why the EV strategy matters. It turns a sequence of arguments about individual war boxes into a long-term infrastructure plan for the whole building. And as EV ownership continues increasing, buildings that develop that plan early are likely to have a much easier and less expensive transition than those waiting until the car park contains 20 electric vehicles and nowhere practical to charge them. China has introduced a new national standard covering the durability of electric vehicle batteries and the accuracy of the battery health information shown to owners. But this story is more significant than you may initially think and considerably more complicated than simply stopping manufacturers from exaggerating how healthy a battery is. The standard creates a common method for measuring the usable energy remaining in an aging battery. It requires vehicles to monitor that figure throughout their life, gives owners a way to access it, and establishes a minimum battery durability benchmark extending as far as 10 years or 200,000 kilometres. For anyone concerned about battery warranties, long-term EV ownership or uncertainty surrounding used electric vehicles, that is the exact kind of standard the industry has been missing. Just in case you were wondering what that was, durability requirements and test methods for in-vehicle traction batteries of electric vehicles Part 1 light duty vehicles. It was published on December the 31st, 2025, and it came into effect on July 1st, 2026. So China has not suddenly announced an entirely new proposal this week. The recent attention has come from a more detailed public explanation of a standard that has already commenced. There is also an important legal distinction. This is a GB slash T standard. The T identifies it as a recommended national standard rather than a compulsory regulation. That means it should not be described as a new law automatically forcing every manufacturer to replace any battery that falls below the limit. There are no publicly disclosed automatic penalties, recalls, or free battery replacement obligations attached simply to a vehicle missing one of these thresholds. However, a recommended national standard backed by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and its national standardization authorities can still become extremely influential. It gives manufacturers, testing organizations, regulators, dealers, and consumers one recognized method for disgusting for discussing battery durability rather than allowing every company to invent its own definition. The standard was developed with participation from major automakers and battery companies, including BYD, CATL, Gealy Cherry, Great Wool, Neo, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, and BMV BMW. It's also broader than some of the early reporting suggests. It applies to battery electric vehicles and externally rechargeable plug-in hybrids. Its scope covers M1 and M2 passenger vehicles with a maximum designed gross weight of up to 3.5 tonne, as well as N1 light commercial vehicles. That means it is relevant not only to normal electric passenger cars, but also to many plug-in hybrids, electric vans and light commercial vehicles. Different durability limits can apply to different vehicle categories, so the most widely reported figures should not automatically be applied to every electric vehicle sold in China. The first thing the standard attempts to fix is confusion around the different battery percentages shown by an electric vehicle. The percentage most drivers see every day is state of charge or SOC. It is effectively the EV equivalent of a fuel gauge. A battery showing 70% state of charge is telling you how much of its currently usable energy remains before the car needs to be recharged. It does not tell you how much capacity the battery has permanently lost since the vehicle was new. A degraded battery can still display 100% state of charge. It simply reaches 100% using a smaller quantity of energy than it accepted when it was new. The new Chinese standard instead focuses on a measurement called State of Certified Energy that compares the energy currently available from the battery with the usable battery energy originally established when the vehicle was certified. If an EV originally had 80 kWh of certified usable battery energy, but can now only provide 64 kWh under the approved test, its SOCE would be about 80%. And that is much closer to what owners normally mean when they ask about battery health. Importantly, it compares usable energy, not necessarily the battery manufacturer's advertised gross pack capacity. An EV might be promoted as having 85 kWh battery while allowing the driver to only use 80 kWh hours. The certified usable figure is the relevant starting point because that is the energy the vehicle was actually capable of delivering when you. The standard also introduces state of certified range or SOCR that compares the electric range available later in the vehicle's life with the range measured when the vehicle was originally certified. So SOCE measures retained usable battery energy. SOCR measures retained certified driving range. Those figures are closely connected, but they are not necessarily identical. A battery that loses 10% of its usable energy will not always lose exactly 10% of its displayed or tested range. Things like tires, software changes, powertrain efficiency, vehicle condition, and the testing environment can all influence how far a vehicle travels using the energy available. For that reason, the standard requires vehicles to monitor both energy retention and range retention throughout their life cycles. One of the most valuable requirements is that the battery health figure cannot remain hidden inside a manufacturer's workshop computer. Vehicles covered by the standard must continuously monitor and update their SOCE and SOCR information throughout their operating life. The most recent figures must be available through the vehicle's diagnostic port and may also be transmitted remotely. More importantly, the manufacturer must provide the owner with at least one way of accessing the SOCE figure. That can be through instrument display, the central infotainment system, or a connected smartphone application. The value available to the owner is supposed to be consistent with the figure available to the relevant authorities. This could fundamentally change the used EV market. At the moment, many owners cannot easily obtain a reasonable and reliable battery health percentage from their own vehicle. Now some cars expose a figure through diagnostic software, some require a dealership inspection, some rely on third-party applications, and others provide no accessible state of health value at all. Now I have our EV5 connected to Home Assistant, and in Home Assistant there is an entity that has state of health. Now the car's at about 30,000 Ks or almost, and the state of health has shown 100% for the entire time. So I don't know how accurate that number is and whether it's actually reporting anything, but it's there nonetheless. So under the Chinese framework, the measurement is tied back to certified usable energy and a prescribed vertification verification rather process. A used EV buyer could potentially look at an official SOCE figure in the same way they currently examine an odometer, service history, or mechanical inspection report. So the headline requirement is that the battery health figure calculated by the vehicle must not overstate the physically measured result by more than 5% points. That wording requires a little bit of care. A number of reports have described this as a general 5% relative error limit. The translated wording of the standard is more specifically expressed as the displayed SOC minus the measured SOCE being no greater than 5%. So in practical terms, the main consumer protection concern is preventing the car from claiming that a degraded battery is healthier than testing shows it really is. For example, if a physical test determines that the battery has an SOC of 80%, the vehicle should not be displaying 90 or 95%. A reading no higher than approximately 85% would remain within the stated limit. It is tolerance around the battery health assessment, not a guarantee that the estimation will be perfectly exact. The standard does not simply trust whatever algorithm the battery management system produces. It establishes a method for comparing the onboard reading with measured usable energy. For battery electric vehicles, the vehicle undergoes the applicable energy consumption and range testing procedure. The amount of energy supplied by the battery during the test is measured and compared with the usable energy established during the vehicle's original certification. Plug-in hybrids are assessed using the applicable PHEV procedure with their equivalent all electric range and usable battery energy considered. The initial verification vehicle can be run in for between 300 and 5,000 kilometres. It is then subjected to a controlled aging and degradation process before the system's calculated health figure is compared with the physically measured result. Now if the vehicle fails the first test, a second measurement can be conducted and the results averaged. And if it still falls outside the tolerance, a third test can be performed. Failure after the third measurement means the vehicle does not pass the accuracy verification. A battery management system estimates capacity using things like voltage, current, temperature, energy flow, and the vehicle's previous operating behaviour. It rarely observes a completely uninterrupted charge or discharge from the battery's true upper limit to its true lower limit. The manufacturers also reserve hidden buffers at both ends of the battery to protect it, and those buffers can be adjusted through software as the battery ages. The result is that the health percentage displayed by the battery management system is partly an estimated produced by a proprietary algorithm. Until that estimate is compared with a common physical test, buyers are largely being asked to trust the company that may eventually have to prove or reject their warranty claim. The vehicles included models from Hyundai, Kia, Genesis, Audi, and Volkswagen. The researchers developed a manufacturer-independent method of comparing battery capacity using controlled sections of charging data. They found real capacity difference of approximately 12 to 25% between vehicles on the same platforms. However, battery management system health readings frequently failed to reflect those differences. On one commercial EV platform, vehicles showed an independently measured capacity gap of almost 25%, while their reported battery health figures remained clustered around 100%. Across other platforms, the relationship between measured capacity and the manufacturer's reported state of health ranged from extremely weak to only moderately useful under restricted conditions. Of the 1114 vehicles, 384 did not expose a battery state of health figure at all. That study is a preprint and should not be treated as the final word on every manufacturer or every BMS system out there, but it's a central finding it is important. The battery can be experiencing real, measurable capacity loss, while the manufacturer provided health indicator moves very little or remains unavailable to the owner entirely. The researchers describe this as an information imbalance because the manufacturer controls the health calculation while also carrying the potential warranty liability. A China standard does not remove every opportunity for disagreement, but it does begin to address that problem by defining the metric and allowing the result to be checked against measured usable energy. The standard also establishes minimum battery durability benchmarks at several combinations of vehicle age and distance traveled. For mainstream M1 and M2 passenger vehicles, the most widely reported SOCE thresholds are at 5 years or 100,000 kilometers, at least 82% of the original certified usable energy should remain. At 8 years or 160,000 kilometres, the minimum falls to 75%. At 10 years or 200,000 Ks, it reaches 70%. The assessment applies when the relevant age or distance threshold is reached rather than allowing a manufacturer to select whichever condition is more favourable to them. A car that travels 100,000 kilometers in three years does not necessarily get to wait until its fifth birthday before its battery durability becomes relevant. Using an 80 kWh certified usable battery as an example, an SOCE of 82% would represent approximately 65.6 kWh remaining. At 75%, that same pack would have approximately 60 kWh. At 70%, it would provide around 56 kWh. Now that's still a very functional battery, but the effect on a long-range vehicle would be pretty noticeable. A vehicle that can achieve 500km when new might deliver something close to 350km if its usable energy and efficiency decline proportionally to 70%. Now real-world range would still vary with speed, temperature, weather, tires, driving style, which is why the separate SOCR measurement is also useful. The 82, 75, and 70% figures are not universal across every vehicle covered by the standard. Short-range battery electric cars with a certified range of no more than 220km can be subject to less demanding limits. N1 light commercial vehicles also use different thresholds, reflecting the heavier work cycles and operating conditions found in commercial service. Published interpretations of the standard list N1 SOCE benchmarks of approximately 80, 70, and 65% across those three stages. That's why the new rules should not be reduced to a claim that every Chinese electric vehicle must always retain 82% after five years. Vehicle category and original range really do matter. It is equally important not to describe these figures as universal warranty guarantees. Manufacturers' warranty remains a separate contract, setting out its own duration, distance limit, exclusions, measurement procedures, and remedy. And for us here in Australia, sometimes all of that doesn't mean diddly squat because we have the Australian consumer law there too. So always something to keep in the back of your mind that a warranty or a guarantee is really just something to make your life easier. If you don't agree with that, you are well within your rights to pursue it further under the Consumer Law Guarantee. So yeah, this standard just gives owners a much stronger reference point. So instead of arguing over an undefined promise that a battery should remain in quote unquote good condition, the discussion can begin with a recognized measurement and a recognised minimum performance benchmark. One of the most interesting parts of the standard is the introduction of what it calls virtual distance. Now a traction battery does not age only when the vehicle is driving. Energy can also be consumed while the car is parked. That might include operating things like the climate control, running electronic systems, supplying electricity through the vehicle to load, or the vehicle to home, vehicle grid, or vehicle to vehicle functions. Now a vehicle could spend years providing backup electricity or powering equipment while accumulating very little road mileage. If battery durability were assessed only using the odometer, that non-driving use would effectively disappear from the vehicle's history. The standard therefore allows energy discharge from a non-traction purposes to be converted into an equivalent amount of virtual distances. That figure must remain within 3% of the result calculated from the measured external energy use. Imagine an EV consumes 20 kWh while powering tools or household appliances. If its reference energy consumption is 20 kWh per 100 km, that discharge represents approximately the same battery energy throughput as driving 100 km. The vehicle may not have moved, but its battery has still completed part of a cycle. Virtual distance provide a way of recording that use. This will become increasingly important as bidirectional charging becomes much more prevalent. An EV regularly supporting a house or participating in a grid services program could deliver a considerable amount of energy over its life without that use appearing on the conventional odometer. That standards verification procedure even specifies tests for Vita G, V2H, V2V, and V2L functions. The vehicle begins with at least 95% state of charge. One external power function is activated at a time, and the system is tested while discharging at its maximum supported power for two hours or until its cutoff point. The testing is conducted at a nominal chamber temperature of 23 degrees Celsius with a permitted variation of 5 degrees. Virtual distance should not be confused with an accusation that using V2L or V to H destroys a battery. Many stationary power applications place far less stress on a battery than sustained high speed driving or repeated ultrafast charge. The purpose is simply to account for energy throughput that an odometer cannot see. That is fair for both owners and manufacturers. A used buyer deserves to know whether a vehicle has spent years acting as a home battery, while a manufacturer assessing a warranty claim deserves an accurate record of the battery's total use. So you're probably sitting there thinking, okay, thank you for all of that information. What's that got to do with us here in Australia? The Australian relevance, I think, is obvious because an increasing proportion of the electric vehicles sold here are made in China. That includes vehicles wearing Chinese brands as well as Chinese built Teslas and models from established international manufacturers. You know, you've got Mazdas and they're all coming out of China now. So Chinese companies are also major global battery suppliers, meaning the technical improvements encouraged by these standards could extend beyond vehicles sold domestically in China. However, an Australian buyer should not assume that every Chinese built EV sold here will immediately display an SOCE figure. The Chinese standard governs the applicable market and certification process. Export specifications, software, and legal obligations can differ. So unless the Australian vehicle is configured to provide the same information, or Australia adopts an equivalent requirement, the owner may not receive the same access. Australia currently has electric powertrain safety standards under ADR 109. Those rules address matters including protection from high voltage components, electrolyte leakage, and the safety of rechargeable energy storage systems. Australia is also introducing ADR 81-03, which standardizes new vehicle energy consumption and range labelling using recognised test procedures. However, those requirements do not create an equivalent owner-visible independently verifiable measure of battery health throughout the vehicle's life. China is not alone in moving in this direction. United Nations Global Technical Regulation No. 22 establishes the same basic concepts of state of certified energy and state of certified range, and it requires onboard battery health monitoring to provide a framework for minimum durability performance. Europe's Euro 7 regulation also requires traction battery health monitors and introduces battery durability requirements for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids drawing on the UN framework. So I think the direction of travel is pretty clear. Battery health is becoming a regulated vehicle characteristic rather than a secret number controlled solely by the manufacturer. And Australia should follow that direction. As the local EV fleet ages, battery condition uncertainty will become a much bigger issue, and the first wave of modern electric vehicles will begin entering the used market in a significant amount of numbers. And buyers will want more than a salesperson saying, Oh yeah, battery seems fine, no stress. A consistent SOCE figure could make healthy used EVs easier to sell, give lenders and insurers better information, assist workshops in identifying abnormal degradation, and make battery warranty disputes much more transparent. It could also protect EV resale values. Battery uncertainty currently encourages buyers to assume the worst and discount every used EV, even when most of those batteries may still be performing well. Reliable health information allows the good vehicles to demonstrate that they are good. Of course, transparency cuts both ways. A vehicle showing 96% SOCE after four years may command a stronger price. One showing 72% will be much harder to sell without a discount or battery repair. But that's how a functioning used market is supposed to operate. The buyer should pay according to the condition of the asset rather than being forced to gamble because the most expensive component cannot be independently assessed. China's new standard is therefore not evidence that electric car batteries are failing at an alarming rate. In many modern EVs, degradation remains relatively gradual, and most manufacturers already offer very lengthy battery warranties. The problem is that owners and used buyers cannot verify the condition for themselves. So what China is attempting to fix is the absence of a shared language and test method. SOC tells you how full the battery is today. SOCE tells you how much battery remains compared when the vehicle was brand new. Virtual distance records battery use that the odometer misses, and the durability thresholds establish what level of retention should reasonably remain at different stages of the vehicle's life. Now, standard is not perfect. It is recommended rather than compulsory at this stage. Different vehicle categories have different limits, and it does not automatically create a right to a replacement battery. But it moves battery health away from vague marketing claims and proprietary workshop calculations and towards a figure that owners can see and independent testing can challenge. For the next phase of EV adoption, particularly the growth of the secondhand market, that transparency may prove almost as important as another increase in range or charging speed. Honda has confirmed Australian pricing for the Super One, and although the number is considerably lower than some early speculation suggested, still places Honda's first locally sold electric vehicle well above the cheapest alternatives from China. Now the standard Honda Super One will cost $36,900 drive away. A second version called the Super One Two Tone will cost $37,400 drive away, and that one's going to combine a violet boost exterior finished with a contrasting black roof, which looks pretty cool. Pre-orders are now open through Honda Centres, with the first Australian customer deliveries scheduled to begin on October 1st. However, supply is going to be extremely tight at launch. Honda says fewer than 130 examples will be available for Australian delivery during the remainder of 2026, before larger numbers will begin arriving in early 2027. That allocation looks tiny compared with the number of people who have already expressed interest. Honda says more than 6,500 Australians registered their interest before pricing was even announced, reportedly exceeding the expressions of interest recorded for the current Civic Type R. Expressions of interest do not always convert into firm orders, just ask Tesla when they launch the cyber truck in the States, particularly once buyers discover the price. But Honda only needs a very small proportion of those people to proceed before the entire initial allocation is spoken for. Yep, so sunny one in fifty, so I don't know, we'll see. The bigger question, I think, is whether the Super One makes financial sense against something like the BYD ADO1. That's what we do here in the deep dive one. We're gonna sort of dive into some of these comparisons here. So the ADO1 essential starts from 23.9.90 before on-road costs, while the more powerful and longer range ADO1 premium is 2790 before on-roads. Now in New South Wales, indicative drive away pricing puts those two versions at about 27 and 31 grand respectively, although the exact figure is going to vary between states and individual locations, whether business, private, all that sort of thing. In most of the measure categories, it gives them less. The Super One uses a 29.6 kWh lithium iron battery. The entry-level ADO1 has a very similar 30kWh lithium-iron phosphate blade battery, while the premium steps up to a much larger 43.2 kWh pack. Now the Addo 1 essential produces 65 kW, 175Nm. The premium is 115 and 220. By comparison, the Super 1 normally produces 47 kilowatts from its front-mounted electric motor. Selecting the boost mode increases that to 70 kW, while peak torque remains at 162 Nm. Now that means the Honda has only 5 kW more than the cheapest ADO1, and that's when it's operating in boost mode, but still has uh slightly less torque. Now, against the Ada 1 Premium, there is really no comparison on raw output. The BYD has got another 45 kW and 58 Nm of torque. The Ada 1 Premium can accelerate 0 to 100 in about 9.1 seconds, and the essential is about 11.1 seconds. The Honda requires 14.5 seconds when using its regular 47kW output, although boost mode reduces that figure significantly to about 10 seconds. That places the Honda between the two BYD versions in terms of acceleration, but it's important to understand that the Honda's performance story is not simply about numbers. So the Super 1 weighs 1,093 kilograms. That's a pretty extraordinarily light for a modern battery electric car. The Addo 1 essential is 1,294 kilograms, while the premium is 1,390 kilos. The Honda is therefore about 200 kilos lighter than the engine level BYD, and it's almost 300 kilos lighter than the premium. Now that difference is substantial in a small car. It's going to affect the way it accelerates, changes direction, gets over speed bumps, falls into potholes, and communicates with the driver. Honda has also widened the Super One's tracks by about 50 mil compared with the Japanese N1E on which it is based. That's a suspension and steering have been retuned, and the car has undergone testing on Australian roads as part of Honda's local development program. Now the result is not an electric hot hatch in the traditional sense. 70 kilowatts is not enough to produce genuinely rapid straight line performance, and a 10-second, 0-100 time is not going to frighten an MG4 owner, especially an X-Power 1. But airly drives suggest the Super 1 is unusually responsive, agile, and entertaining for such a small EV. The steering's been praised for being direct and properly weighted, while the light body allows the car to change direction without the heavy, detached feeling found in many larger electric vehicles. Body movement is reportedly controlled without using excessively stiff suspension, although rough surfaces and repeated speed bumps can still expose the limitations of its short wheelbase. The Honda appears to be following the old philosophy of making a relatively slow car enjoyable to drive quickly rather than relying on enormous power figures to create excitement. Boost mode is central to that approach. Activating it does more than increase motor output from 47 to 70 kW. It also changes the instrument display and the interior lighting. It activates an artificial engine soundtrack and allows the driver to use steering wheel paddles to control a simulated 7-speed transmission. The actual electric drivetrain obviously still uses a single-speed reduction gear. There are no physical gears being changed. Instead, the software modifies the motor's power delivery, regenerative braking, and sound to create the impression of an engine moving through a gearbox. The system even includes a simulated rev limit on the driver and holds one of the artificial gears for too long. Honda has linked the experience to cars including the old City Turbo 2 and the DC2 Integra Type R. Oof, what a car. Although nobody should expect it to sound exactly like them either. Early reviews have described the synthetic note as more of a deep electronic or a motorcycle sound than a convincing recreation of a classic Clossic, of a classic Honda engine. Gotta hit that VTEC. Some EV buyers will consider the entire system unnecessary or even ridiculous. Hard to imagine why. Others will appreciate that Honda has at least attempted to give this small electric car an identity beyond being cheap and efficient. It's definitely not cheap. The simulator transmission can also be switched off, so buyers who prefer a conventional, quite EV experience are not forced to use it. Which is good. The Super One offers several driving modes, including Econ, City, Normal Sport, and Boost. Sport Mode provides access to the simulator gear sheet systems but does not increase output beyond the regular 47 kW. The full 70kW is reserved for boost. City Mode adds a well-calibrated one-pedal driving function, while steering wheel paddles can also adjust the level of regen braking. The other major part of the Super One's appeal is its size. It measures thus 3,580mm long, 1575mm wide, and 1615mm tall, and sitting on a 2,520mm wheelbase. And for comparison, the BYD at O1 is 3,990mm long and 1720mm wide. So that makes the BYD 410mm longer and 145mm wider than the Honda. Interestingly, the Honda's wheelbase is actually 20mm longer. So 40, 400ml shorter, but 20mm longer wheelbase. It's just demonstrating how aggressively Honda has pushed the wheels towards the corners of the car. The Super One will be the smallest electric passenger car available in Australia. For someone regularly navigating tight around car parks, narrow inner city streets, or small home garage, its footprint has a genuine feature rather than a small novelty. But there are compromises, obviously. The Super One is strictly a four-seater. There is no centre position or centre seat belt in the rear. The Ado 1 is also registered as a four-seater, so Honda is not at a disadvantage in that particular comparison when comparing to the Ado 1, that is, but neither vehicle will suit buyers who occasionally need to carry five people. The Honda's boot is also very small. With the rear seats in use, capacity is 162 litres. The Ado 1 is 308 litres, which is almost twice as much to give a bit of comparison. The frunk in the Kia EVE5 is 67 litres, so you know it's uh just a bit of it's small. Put it that way. The Super One fights back, however, with Honda's magic seat system. The rear seat bases can fold upward, creating a tall floating load area behind the front seats for items that are awkward to fit into a conventional boot, and then the rear back rests can also fold into a 50-50 split, and the front and rear seats can be arranged to create a longer cargo space through the cabin. Anyone who remembers the Honda Jazz had those magic seats, and uh the things I have seen people put in those cars, people went to gone to IKEA and putting stuff in the uh the boot and then also in the middle, obviously the seats in between them. It's it's crazy. Obviously, there's only one or two people in there, but um yeah, it's it's crazy, you know. You can really make use of that small space, obviously, if you've got no rear passengers. So, but you know, even though the flexibility is very useful, it doesn't change the fact that the Honda has very limited everyday luggage room when four people are on board. And speaking of frunks as I did before, this one doesn't have one. And the Bose Sound System Subwoofer occupies space beneath the rear cargo floor. So that means carrying charging cables may need to remain in the main luggage compartment. The Honda interior does, however, help explain some of the price premium. Final Australian equipment details have not yet been published in a complete specification sheet. However, the cars shown for this market are expected to include a 9-inch central touchscreen, a 7-inch digital instrument display, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, climate control air conditioning, heated front seats, a heated steering wheel, and the 8-speaker Bose Premium Sound System. Don't forget that sub in the back, in the boot. The front sports seats are more heavily bolstered than those normally found in a city car and feature a retro design inspired by Honda's small performance models. Ambient lighting changes colours when boost mode is selected, while physical controls remain available for a number of commonly used functions. The cabin is reportedly very well assembled, although some services use fairly basic, hard, I like to call scratchy plastics, and storage space is also limited. There's no wireless phone charger in the overseas specification car tested by local media here, and there are few properly shaped areas to stop a phone or other loose items sliding around. The ADO1 takes a more technology focused approach. Both versions receive a 10.1 inch infotainment system, 7-inch driver display, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, OVDS software updates, keyless entry and start, NFC key card access, and vehicle to load capability. Vehicle to load allows the BYD's battery to power external electrical appliances. Now Honda has not announced an equivalent function for the Super 1. That doesn't mean it won't have it. I would say that the capability will be there. It'll have an onboard charger to take the AC into DC for the battery, so most of the time those can then do it in reverse. The ADO1 Premium also adds equipment including alloy wheels, heated front seats, electronically adjustable front seats, a wireless phone charger, electronically folding mirrors, and a 360-degree camera. So although the Honda may feel more distinctive and driver focused, the VID Premium provides a very strong equipment list for considerably less money. Charging is another area where the Honda does not establish a clear advantage. The Super One is expected to accept up to 10 kilowatts from an AC charger and approximately 50kW from a DC fast charger. And on a 7.4 kilowatt home box charging from 10 to 100%, it's going to take about 4.5 hours. DC charge from 15 to 80% is claimed to take about 30 minutes. Comparatively, the ADO1 accepts up to 11 kilowatts on AC, and the maximum DC rate is 65 kilowatts for the essential and 85 kilowatts for the premium, with both versions also quoting about half an hour, 10 to 80%. Peak charging power always doesn't tell the story because the size of the battery and the shape of the charging curve also matter. Charging curve is so important. I touched on it on the last deep dive. I always point to the Tesla Cybertruck with its 500 kilowatt DC charging and how that's just marketing spin basically. Oh, it hits it for about three seconds. So always the naught or the 10 to 80% or the 10 to 100 or whatever the figure that they use is generally the one you want to be looking at. Anybody who quotes 10 to 70%, you know that that 70 to 100, you're gonna be going through a few cups of coffee before that's ready. Even so, the Honda's 50 kilowatt maximum is modest for a new electric car launching in late 2026. Its small battery prevents charging stops from becoming excessively long, but it's clearly not an EV design for regular interstate travel. I really this is you've got to be able to AC charge this. It's not gonna be a DC car. So you still want to have it. You still you in a pinch you need it, but this is gonna be you're gonna either have off-street parking or you're gonna be in a council area that allows curb parking to run a cable from your house, or as I've mentioned in some of the previous episodes, some of the distributors are now gonna have uh pole, street pole, light pole charging. So that's where it's gonna really be doing the vast majority, if not the all of its charging. There's also some confusion around the Super One's official range. Honda's Australian launch material promotes a figure of up to 253 kilometres. However, overseas technical information lists approximately 206 kilometres on the combined WLTP cycle and as much as 320 kilometres on the urban WLTP cycle. So until Honda publishes a complete Australian spec sheet explaining the testing basis for the 253 kilometre number, it should not automatically be compared directly with the ADO1's combined WLTP figures. Speaking of which, the BYD Essential carries a 220km combined range, while the premium offers 310km. So at the very best, the entry level one appears broadly comparable with the Honda for range. The premium should comfortably travel a lot further. Now Honda does regain some ground with its ownership package. The Super One is covered by a five-year unlimited kilometre vehicle warranty, five years of roadside assistance, and five scheduled services priced at $199 each. So owners who continue meeting Honda's servicing conditions can receive another three years of warranty and roadside assistance through the Honda Extend program. The Ada One has a longer standard vehicle warranty of six years or 150,000 Ks, along with an eight year or 160,000 kilometre traction battery warranty. Honda's battery warranty conditions for the Super One still need to be examined once the complete Australian documentation is released. Safety is another area where the BYD currently has a clear, independently verified advantage. The ADO1 carries a five star NCAP safety rating dated 2025 and that applies to all variants sold in Australia. The rating is based on testing of the BYD Dolphin Surf sold in Europe, but NCAP has confirmed that the Australian ADO1 carries the same safety specification. Know what that means. It basically means that NCAP did not specifically test, as in crash test his vehicle. They obviously checked all of the specs were the same. But it just means that they've utilized their fellow companies NCAP in Europe to give the score that they did. So and it the Ado 1D scores 82% for adult occupant protection, 86% for child occupant protection, 76% for vulnerable road user protection, and 79% for safety assistance. Standard safety equipment includes autonomous emergency braking capable of responding to vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, junctions, and head-on scenarios, along with the lane keeping assistance, lane departure warning, emergency lane keeping, and speed sign recognition. Now the Honda Super 1 does not currently have an NCAP safety rating. Honda is expected to equip it with its sensing driver assistance package, including autonomous emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, lane keeping assistance, traffic sign recognition, and traffic jam assistance. However, until the final Australian specification is published and the vehicle is assessed by ANCAP, the Super One cannot match the ADO1's confirmed five-star local safety rating. So with all of that information, ultimately you'd come to the conclusion that the ADO1 is the rational choice. It costs less, provides a substantially larger boot, offers V2L, charges more quickly on paper at least, and in the premium form has significantly more power and range. As someone choosing purely through specifications and value for money will struggle to justify paying more for the Honda. Generally, people will fall into one of two larger categories. They are rational and emotional buyers, and then within those two categories you'll have fast paced and slow paced. So car makers always have to try and appeal either to all of those categories or just decide to pick one or two of them, I guess. And so the Super One is not trying to be slightly more expensive at O1, it's targeting buyers who value compact dimensions, lightweight, established Honda branding, unusual styling, and a more engaging driving experience. It's also likely to appeal to people who want an electric second car but do not want another anonymous looking sort of crossover or a car that feels like a mobile electronic appliance. Now whether those qualities are worth six grand over an Auto One premium or $10,000 over an essential is entirely subjective. The Honda gives buyers less car in the traditional sense, but potentially a lot more personality. And with only 130 examples arriving this year and more than 6,500 expressions of interest already recorded, Honda probably does not need to convince the entire market. It only needs to find a small group of Australians prepared to buy this tiny EV with their heart rather than their calculator. And that's a wrap for Plugged in Australia episode 81, Deep Dive. Again, thank you very much for your patience. This was uh supposed to be out last week, didn't happen. A little bit of favour to ask if I could get your opinion, if you think that it would be better to have these subjects, or segments rather, in separate episodes. So I covered five subjects today. The episode is going to be near enough to two hours long. Uh, I know there's timestamps there for you to skip ahead. Would it be better to separate them into maybe just one subject and do a deep dive with the quick charge episodes as they come out? Or are we better off just having them in a real big one and you can sort of pick and choose as you like? I very much appreciate it. You can either put a comment on this particular video or you can send me an email. Info at pluggedinaustralia.com.au. And until the next time, stay plugged in and stay charged. Chivi the ammo.