Four per cent of Australians earning less than $40,000 a year say they use or intend to own an electric vehicle. Among those earning more than $241,000, the figure is 22 per cent. That gap sits at the center of a Monash University study on what Australians want from future home life.
The Foresights for Future Australian Home Life report drew on 49 participants from a range of backgrounds across the country. One-quarter said they couldn't afford the costs of owning an EV, including purchase, maintenance and charger installation.
Who Gets Left Behind
The cost barrier isn't a fringe concern. The Electric Vehicle Council said an electric vehicle was selling every 100 seconds in Australia and projected EVs would account for almost one-quarter of all new car sales. Many participants, though, felt the boom was passing them by.
Liza, from Tasmania, called EVs a great idea but said “they're so bloody expensive.” Buying a new electric car was financially out of reach for her. Wendy, from the ACT, put it more pointedly: “I feel like saying Canberra is the Tesla town … People here may be able to afford electric cars, but I don't know, well, I can't, but how are people going to afford these new technologies?”
Rooftop solar shows a similar pattern. One in three Australian homes has it, and installers add about 300,000 systems annually. But the survey found adoption rose with income, and households earning under $80,000 were more likely to say they had no intention of installing solar. Some participants said they felt excluded from the energy transition, including EV and solar purchases, because the technologies seemed aimed at more affluent groups.
“The cost-of-living crisis is an important dimension [in the energy transition],” lead researcher Professor Sarah Pink said. She said one participant imagined possibly living in their car in the future rather than being able to purchase an electric vehicle.
What People Want at Home
Among households that owned or planned to buy an EV or plug-in hybrid, about one-third wanted affordable charging options, including solar power or off-peak electricity tariffs. Ravi, from Victoria, was direct: “We would love to charge at home. We don't want to go outside and wait for hours.”
The researchers said Australians' relationship with their homes and cars is changing as the energy transition shifts how electricity gets generated and delivered across the network. “We're trying to understand how people will live in their homes, and what the implications will be for how they use energy,” Professor Pink said.
Work Is Moving Into the Home
Half of the surveyed households had one member working from home at least once a week. For some, it's about access as much as convenience. Jane, from Victoria, said she doesn't have to worry about traffic or a cancelled train. She also said she has a disability, and public transport isn't viable for her much of the time.
Andrew, from South Australia, said working from home let him drop off and pick up his children, step away to deal with something like an electrician, and keep working without rescheduling his whole life. Participants often saw combining an office area with other parts of the home as a way to do more than one thing at once, while scheduling work and childcare around each other.
Professor Pink said people imagined their next home having more space for a dedicated work-from-home room. University of Sydney associate professor of building science Jungsoo Kim offered another route: new homes could use space more efficiently, with flexible areas or spatial separation. Adaptable rooms or zones could provide visual and acoustic separation, along with good daylight, ventilation, thermal comfort and access to power, he said. Some people need privacy for concentration, meetings or confidential conversations, while others work well in shared, open areas. In smaller homes, flexible spaces could be more practical than a dedicated office; movable screens, curtains, compact furniture, good storage and task lighting could create separation without an extra room.
Why This Matters: The study puts numbers on something many households describe in plain terms: the energy transition is arriving unevenly. When EV and solar uptake climbs with income, lower-earning households risk missing out on the potential savings and benefits those technologies offer, while the cost-of-living pressures they already face continue. Participants asked for affordable charging, solar access and off-peak tariffs—questions of public policy and network design rather than personal choice. The work-from-home findings point the same way. Flexible housing design could matter most for people with disabilities and carers, and for those in smaller homes. From a policy perspective, the findings suggest a transition built around who can pay may leave out the people who most need relief.