An inquiry has been told that household EV infrastructure could cost as much as $10 billion.

Experts have warned that the transition to electric vehicles will put as much pressure on Australia’s already struggling electricity grid as homes and apartments do. This warning comes as the House of Representatives continues its inquiry into the impact of the widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), including the necessary infrastructure and costs to motorists.

Roger Dargaville, the interim director of Race for 2030, stated that powering EVs in just one million households could require as much as $10 billion in power inverters. These inverters, unlike home batteries such as Tesla’s Powerwall, would enable EV drivers to feed power back into the grid.

“That piece of infrastructure costs about $10,000 at the moment, and if you have a million vehicles sometime in the future trying to do this, that’s $10 billion,” he said.

“It’s very dangerous to make predictions about the cost. We all made the mistake with solar panels, saying that they can’t come down, and they’ve exceeded expectations.”