Australia’s Growing EV Fleet: What Businesses Need to Know About Charging Infrastructure and Insurance

Electric vehicle sales in Australia jumped 93.3 per cent year-on-year in January 2026, and plug-in hybrid sales rose 170.5 per cent over the same period, according to FCAI and Electric Vehicle Council data. CommBank separately recorded a 161 per cent jump in weekly new EV loan volumes in March 2026, a surge FCAI’s Tony Weber attributed to fuel supply disruptions pushing buyers toward electric options faster than the market had planned for. Whatever’s driving it, the practical consequence for Australian businesses is the same: EV adoption is accelerating faster than most insurance programs have kept pace with, and if your business hasn’t reviewed its cover against this shift, that gap is worth closing before it’s tested.

The Scale of the Shift

The most recent confirmed government data shows 259,690 battery electric and fuel-cell vehicles registered in Australia as at 31 January 2025, up 54.6 per cent on the year before, according to the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics. BITRE’s next annual snapshot, covering January 2026, hadn’t been published at the time of writing, so the 2026 sales figures above are the clearer current signal of where things stand right now, a genuine acceleration on top of an already fast-growing base.

This isn’t confined to fleet vehicles either. Commercial property owners, strata managers, logistics operators, retailers and office buildings are increasingly installing charging infrastructure for employees, customers, tenants and fleet vehicles, often well ahead of updating the insurance program that’s supposed to protect it. That gap, not whether EVs are a good idea, which is a settled question by this point, is the actual subject of this article.

What Installing a Charger Actually Changes on Your Policy

Installing an EV charger tends to get treated as a facilities upgrade, something for the maintenance budget rather than a conversation with your broker. That’s a mistake, because a charging station introduces distinct considerations most existing policies weren’t written with in mind.

Property cover. A charging station becomes part of your building’s insured infrastructure, exposed to vehicle impacts, storm damage, electrical faults, vandalism and power surges like any other fixed asset. The specific question worth asking is whether this addition falls within your policy’s capital additions clause, a common provision that automatically extends cover to new assets up to a set value or percentage of your existing sum insured, or whether it needs to be separately declared and added. If the installation pushes your total insured value beyond what that clause allows, it needs to be notified directly rather than assumed to be covered. A second, less obvious question applies where a third-party charging operator installs and owns the equipment on your site under a commercial arrangement: confirm in that agreement, not just your own policy, who actually owns and insures the hardware, since it may not be your asset to insure at all.

Electrical system upgrades and disclosure. Many commercial charging installations require meaningful upgrades to a building’s electrical system. The National Construction Code’s 2022 edition introduced Section J9D4, requiring buildings across Classes 2 to 9, apartments, hotels, offices, retail, and most other non-residential building types, to provide the electrical infrastructure readiness for future EV charger installation, effective from 1 May 2023. For apartment buildings specifically, this meant circuits capable of supporting a charger delivering at least 12kWh overnight. Worth knowing before assuming the code will simply get stricter over time: the next edition, NCC 2025, did not adopt the mandatory charger installation requirements that had been proposed during public consultation, and it actually removed the apartment-specific charging equipment requirement that existed under NCC 2022. Regulation here is moving less predictably than the sales figures above might suggest, which makes checking your own building’s actual current requirement more useful than assuming a trend. Regardless of where your building sits in that framework, if you’ve made a material electrical upgrade to support charging, your insurer needs to know. Failing to disclose it is exactly the kind of gap that surfaces at claim time, not before.

Public liability. A charging station increases the amount of public interaction with your premises: a trip hazard from a cable across a walkway, damage to a customer’s vehicle during charging, an electrical fault causing injury. None of these are exotic risks, but they’re new points of contact your policy may not explicitly contemplate. If a third-party charging operator runs the equipment on your site under contract, check that agreement specifically for how liability is allocated between you and them, since a poorly worded site agreement can leave the property owner holding more of that exposure than intended.

Battery Fire Risk: Separating Perception From Reality

Battery fire risk dominates most conversations about EV insurance, so it’s worth addressing directly and precisely.

The Australian Government’s own data is reassuring. As of April 2026, EV FireSafe had recorded 14 EV battery fire incidents nationally since 2021, against a combined battery electric and plug-in hybrid fleet exceeding 500,000 vehicles, according to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. Internationally, Sweden’s Civil Contingencies Agency data, cited by the Electric Vehicle Council, has found conventional petrol and diesel vehicles catch fire at a rate roughly 20 times higher than electric vehicles.

So the risk isn’t frequency, it’s behaviour when a fire does occur. Lithium-ion battery fires can involve thermal runaway, a chemical chain reaction distinct from a conventional vehicle fire, producing extremely high temperatures, a longer burn duration, the possibility of re-ignition after the fire appears extinguished, and substantially higher water requirements for suppression. For a business running a vehicle depot, an underground car park or a workshop, this is genuinely relevant to how the space is assessed, both by your own risk process and by an insurer, even though the base statistics say fires themselves are rare. Concrete steps worth taking: installing chargers to the correct standard rather than the cheapest option, a routine maintenance and inspection schedule, fire detection appropriate to the specific location, and documented emergency procedures that account for the suppression differences above.

Fleet Management: A Genuinely Different Risk Profile

Businesses transitioning company vehicles to EVs are managing a different set of operational risks, not necessarily a larger set, but a different one.

EV repairs after a collision can take longer and cost more than an equivalent conventional repair, largely because specialist battery inspection capability isn’t available at every panel shop. This is worth reviewing specifically against your motor policy’s replacement vehicle provisions and your business interruption exposure if a key vehicle is off the road longer than expected. Battery replacement itself deserves particular attention, since it’s one of the most valuable components in an EV and not every policy treats battery-related damage the same way as the rest of the vehicle, worth confirming directly how your policy defines a total loss where the battery, rather than the body, is the primary point of failure. Driver training matters too: safe charging procedures, basic battery management awareness, and realistic range planning genuinely reduce both safety incidents and the claims that follow them.

Commercial Property Owners: A New Set of Underwriting Factors

Property owners face growing pressure to offer charging infrastructure for tenants and visitors, and while that’s a genuine drawcard for a building’s appeal, it changes how an insurer assesses the property. Charger location, electrical capacity, existing fire protection, construction type and vehicle density within parking areas all factor into that assessment. The practical takeaway is sequencing: engage your insurance adviser before a major charging project begins, not after installation is complete and you’re retrofitting the disclosure.

Strata Buildings Are a Live Case Study in How Fast This Is Moving

Strata schemes deserve specific attention, because the regulatory ground has shifted meaningfully in the past year. From 1 July 2025, NSW reforms mean owners corporations can no longer block an EV charger installation on aesthetic grounds alone, other than in heritage buildings, and approval now requires only a simple majority rather than a 75 per cent special resolution. A lot owner who believes a request has been unreasonably refused can now challenge that decision at the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal, and the 2025 changes make it materially harder for a committee to refuse without a genuinely valid reason.

For committees weighing this up, one thing worth knowing: reporting citing strata insurer CHU indicates that permitting EV charging within a scheme has not, in itself, been found to change insurance rates or risk assessment, separate from the specific installation and electrical considerations covered above. Worth confirming this directly with your own strata insurer rather than assuming it applies uniformly, but it’s a useful starting point for a committee working through a request.

The Cyber Angle Most Businesses Miss Entirely

This deserves its own section because it’s the risk most fleet and property conversations skip past. Modern EV charging systems rarely operate as standalone hardware. Most run through cloud platforms, mobile apps, payment gateways and network-connected management software, which makes a charging station, functionally, a connected device on your network. That connectivity creates real exposure: payment system compromise, data breaches through the management platform, network outages taking charging offline across a site, and broader operational disruption if the charger is part of a larger fleet management system. As charging infrastructure becomes more connected rather than less, this belongs inside your cyber insurance review, not treated as a separate, unrelated facilities question.

Where the Government’s Own Investment Is Going

Worth knowing what’s actually being funded, since it shapes where charging infrastructure will expand fastest and where your business might interact with it. The federal Driving the Nation Fund is backing several specific programs: a National EV Charging Network delivering fast chargers on key highway routes, an Accelerating EV Charging Program rolling out kerbside and regional chargers in areas that currently have gaps, and a DRIVEN Program supporting dealerships and repairers to install charging and EV-specific workshop equipment, with a rebate stream running through to 2029.

Where This Leaves Your Business

None of this is a reason to slow down an EV transition that’s clearly accelerating, if anything, the January 2026 sales data suggests the opposite pressure. It’s a reason to make sure your insurance program is having the same conversation your operations team already is. Whether you’re running an EV fleet, installing workplace charging, managing a commercial property, or sitting on a strata committee working through a charging request, the goal isn’t simply to insure the new assets. It’s to make sure your business’s actual risk profile is understood, disclosed and reflected in the cover you’re paying for.

Want a review of how your EV fleet or charging infrastructure is reflected in your current insurance program? Speak with Knightsbridge Insurance Group about your commercial motor cover.

Important Disclaimer: This article provides general information only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. Commercial motor, property, public liability and strata insurance requirements for EV fleets and charging infrastructure vary significantly based on individual businesses, property types, and insurers. Regulatory requirements, including the National Construction Code and state-based strata legislation, are subject to change and vary by jurisdiction and building class. Readers should confirm current requirements and consult with qualified insurance professionals before making decisions about EV infrastructure or fleet transitions. Knightsbridge Insurance Group holds Australian Financial Services Licence 514855.

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