EVs just overtook petrol cars: What does this mean for Property?
The release of the Environment & Energy Efficiency Solutions category of Proptech Australia’s 2026 Proptech Map could not be better timed.
In August, Australians bought more electric cars than petrol ones for the first time.
The numbers are stark. VFACTS data published by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries on 3 September, combined with Tesla and Polestar registrations reported by the Electric Vehicle Council, put battery electric vehicle sales at 27,078 for the month, ahead of 25,824 petrol cars and 23,608 diesel.
EVs took a record 24.9% share of the market, up 171% year-on-year. Add hybrids and plug-in hybrids, and electrified vehicles reached 51.8% of everything sold — the first month combustion-only cars have been a minority on Australian roads.
That is a car story on the surface. For our members, it is a property story.
A car is now an appliance that draws 10 to 15 kilowatt-hours a night and parks inside a building. Charging, load management, tariff optimisation and EV-readiness have quietly become building problems rather than automotive ones.
The 32 companies in the Environment & Energy Efficiency Solutions category of the 2026 Proptech Map, one of 14 category maps we’re currently releasing – are the ones holding the tools to meet these challenges.
Households building their own power station
The trigger for the EV swing was fuel prices, and it cuts against the property owner rather than for them.
The ACCC’s weekly fuel monitoring report of 4 September 2026 had average petrol at 204.6c a litre across the five biggest capitals, up 9.3 cents in a month, with diesel at 249.3c. The fuel excise was fully restored on 3 August at 53.7c a litre – an impact of up to 18.8c at the pump once GST is added – landing on top of oil prices already lifted by the conflict in the Gulf.
The Australian Financial Review’s read of the August result put the shift down to that combination of sustained fuel prices, subsidies and cheap imports.
Electricity, by contrast, got a little cheaper. The Default Market Offer for 2026‑27, effective 1 July, cut default prices 3.4% to 5.0% in NSW and 7.2% in south-east Queensland, though South Australia rose 1.4%, according to the Australian Energy Regulator. Cheap daytime electrons against expensive imported fuel is a one-way door, and households have walked straight through it.
The Clean Energy Regulator’s Quarterly Carbon Market Report, released 28 August, recorded a full gigawatt of rooftop solar installed in a single quarter, smashing the previous record of 942 megawatts set in the December quarter of 2023.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government’s Cheaper Home Batteries scheme passed 500,000 installations on 14 August just 13 months after it launched. More than 507,000 subsidised batteries and 14 gigawatt-hours of storage have been created.
At the scheme’s one-year mark that was already about one home in 17, and installs were still running at roughly 2,000 a day in late July even after the rebate was trimmed back in May.
Rooftop solar took 15 years to become the normal choice for an Australian home. Home batteries have done it in about 15 months.
The car has now joined them, which means the average household is quietly assembling a small power station nobody has properly instrumented: generation, storage and a very large mobile load, all sitting on one property.
32 Proptechs in the Game
Four groups of companies on the map are this massive change from different angles.
The largest is measuring and optimising the buildings we already have: CIM, bueno, Exergenics, BTune, HAL Systems, Avani Solutions, Arnowa, Aeristech, Schneider Electric and Conexie.
BTune’s model is a useful signal for where this is heading: a 15% to 30% cut in HVAC energy use, sold on shared savings with zero money down. When the payback is contractual, adoption stops being a sustainability decision and becomes a procurement one.
Underneath that sits the data layer: Wattwatchers on real-time, circuit-level electricity data, Calumino on AI thermal sensing and Noise Net on amenity monitoring. Without granular metering, nothing above it – flexibility, load shifting, EV charging management – is even possible to sell, let alone trade.
A third group designs the problem out before a building exists: Cerclos (eTool) on embodied carbon, Evitat on materials, Cool Climate Homes (PowerHaus) and ARCHANAUT ScanQ on NatHERS modelling and assessor workflow, VacuumWood Tech on carbon-negative building modules, and NABERS and WELLSTATE on ratings and certification. This is the part of the map regulation will reach first.
And the fourth is retrofitting the roughly 11 million homes already standing: Brighte financing solar and home improvement, FormBay running electrification field delivery for installers and retailers, BOOM! Power on turnkey electrification, TopProperty.eco matching households to solar, battery, EV and hot-water installers suburb by suburb, plus EnergyFlex, Hubble.sh, My Greener Planet and ValAI helping households make the call. Land Insight and Xylo Systems round out the category, covering environmental risk and biodiversity.
Read against the EV numbers, one gap stands out. With EVs at nearly a quarter of new sales and electrified vehicles now the majority, a growing share of buyers arrive with a charging requirement. And for apartments and strata title, that is a capital works, electrical capacity and metering problem almost no building was designed to solve.
Nothing on this part of the map is squarely built for it yet; Wattwatchers, EnergyFlex and TopProperty.eco sit closest. It is the clearest white space we can see in the category.
Bottom line
The cultural argument on household energy is over: Australians made the call faster than the property industry expected, and August’s EV numbers confirm it. What is still missing is the connection: joining the roof, the battery, the car and the building’s own data into something a buyer, valuer, lender or strata committee can actually act on. That is the opportunity sitting in front us. And it’s a large one.
The Environment & Energy Efficiency Solutions category is part of Proptech Australia’s 2026 Proptech Map, and we’re releasing all 14 category maps over the coming weeks. If your company is missing, or you think it’s sitting in the wrong category, let us know at members@proptechaustralia.com.au.
While each map is being released as a standalone slide, Proptech Australia members get the full interactive version online — searchable, filterable and updated as the ecosystem moves. For more information on becoming a member, go to proptechaustralia.com.au/signup, or email our Membership Services Specialist, Patricia Louise, at members@proptechaustralia.com.au.
