Once a week, after work, Michael Bond drives 5 kilometres from his home in Melbourne's west to the nearest public charger.

"It's not something that you enjoy, particularly in the winter, when you've got competing demands of needing to cook dinner, walk the dog, get whatever jobs around the house done, and relaxing would be nice as well," Mr Bond says. 

"But when you know you've got to go to the charger, you've got to go to the charger. It would be nice to have the option to do it at home but we just don't."

Nor do hundreds of new electrical vehicle owners in terraces or apartments in Australia's cities.

It's just one of the teething problems of electric vehicles (EVs) as the transition away from fossil fuel cars is finally taking off, from a few thousand on the road in 2019, to tens of thousands — and almost doubling year on year.

According to the Electric Vehicle Council's Ross De Rango, the quality of the public charging infrastructure varies significantly from state to state, meaning that access to the chargers can be a lottery for EV owners.

"Charging infrastructure is being rolled out around the country with support from federal, state and local governments at different levels and at different speeds in different places," he says.

"In some regions, charging infrastructure is well advanced. In others, there's a bit of work to do."

This is all the more important because, according to Mr De Rango, overseas studies show inability to charge at home is one of the leading factors in people who have bought an EV switching back to petrol-driven cars. 

NSW leads the pack with public EV chargers, while Victoria falls short

Mr De Rango says the New South Wales network, with multiple high-power ports at every charging station, is the benchmark in Australia, whereas Victoria lags far behind its neighbour to the north.

While there are some charging stations along the Hume Highway towards Mildura, if you head west from Melbourne along the Great Ocean Road, or east towards the border town of Mallacoota, you will find it more difficult to locate a charger. 

"The New South Wales state government has committed over $200 million towards the deployment of charging infrastructure under a range of different programs," Mr De Rango says. 

"In Victoria, the funding level is a little under $20 million. Now, Victoria is not quite as populous or as large as New South Wales, but neither is it 10 times smaller. In order to achieve New South Wales level outcomes, they would need to be spending a bit more." 

Rob Asselman works for Chargefox, a private company rolling out a network of chargers across Australia. He says it can be difficult to get hold of the units due to competition from overseas.

Mr Asselman says it can also be difficult finding a suitable location for the charging stations, and getting adequate electricity supply.

"Critically we need the power supply. It's not like plugging in a toaster or kettle in the home — EV chargers use a lot of power," he says.

"There's a lot of supply, and Australia's energy supply is amazing. It's a miracle that we get power to all these places, but it wasn't designed to meet the demand of big automobiles that are charging really really fast.

"So that's another challenge to overcome."

Victoria's EV tax might be too much, too fast

Victoria is also the nation's test lab for the controversial road user charge – the road tax that will eventually replace fuel excise as petrol vehicles disappear from the roads.

Mr De Rango says the Victorian government has arguably acted hastily in stinging EV users with the road tax, while simultaneously presiding over a weaker charging network.

"Victoria is a state where the introduction of the road user charge for EV was brought on very, very fast," he says. 

"Other states have made announcements that they will bring in a road usage charge, but that's in the future. They're going to give EVs a chance to gain some momentum before introducing a new mechanism of tax against them."

Victoria's road user charge has plenty of critics — two EV owners are challenging it in the High Court — but Michael Bond is happy to pay it for now.

"I understand the reason for it," he says. 

"[But] they're not future planning the actual road usage that I'm being charged for, and the infrastructure isn't there.

"So I think by all means charge me the fee, but let's do something with it early rather than wait."

When contacted for a response, the Victorian government said it had invested in infrastructure to lay the groundwork for the state's target of all light vehicle sales being zero-emission vehicles by 2030.