Post‑Conference Reflections: Are Strata Communities Really EV‑Ready?

Post‑Conference Reflections: Are Strata Communities Really EV‑Ready?

On Thursday, 4th June at the QStrata conference, our General Manager of Energy, Drew McKillican, issued a simple challenge to the room: EVs are no longer “the future”, they are already parked in your basement, and your building needs to catch up.

Strata committees are already wrestling with skyrocketing insurance costs, combustible cladding and ageing infrastructure. Now, electric vehicle (EV) charging has rapidly emerged as the next major infrastructure challenge facing strata communities, and it is arriving much faster than many realise.

The EV Tipping Point Has Already Passed

Australian EV adoption is no longer a niche trend confined to enthusiasts and early adopters. In one recent month, 46% of all new car sales in Australia were electrified. The technology has matured, the vehicles are on the road, and public charging has improved dramatically in just a few years.

For strata communities, this isn’t a distant planning question. It is a live, operational issue that is already shaping buyer and tenant behaviour. More residents are now ruling out buildings that cannot support convenient, safe and fairly priced EV charging at home. In other words, EV readiness is becoming part of a building’s value proposition, just like lifts, internet connectivity or quality amenities.

The Real Problem Is Not The Car - It’s The Building

Drew’s message at the conference was clear: the EV problem is no longer about the vehicle.

• It is not about range.

• It is not about battery technology.

• It is not even primarily about public fast‑charging infrastructure anymore.

The real bottleneck lies at the end of the trip, in car parks and basements across Australia’s strata communities. Residents can charge on highways, at shopping centres and while travelling, but too often they arrive home and discover they cannot reliably charge where they live.

In 2026, that feels fundamentally out of step with how people want to live. Living in strata should not feel like a compromise between the home you love and the way you choose to move.

A Personal Journey That Mirrors Your Residents’ Experience

To bring this to life, Drew shared his own recent experiment. Since a major geopolitical conflict began on 28 February, he has committed to travelling entirely by electric means, no petrol car journeys and no flights, just a small EV and the occasional electrified metro train.

Over that period he has driven more than 8,000 kilometres, including six return trips from home to the Gold Coast, at a total energy cost of around 350 dollars. At two dollars per litre for fuel, the same driving would have cost more than 1,000 dollars, a powerful illustration of the running‑cost benefits that increasingly attract residents to EVs.

On his latest 700‑kilometre drive to the conference venue, he needed just two short 20‑minute charging stops, with no real inconvenience. Yet when he arrived with 10% charge remaining, he discovered the venue, Seaworld, had no EV chargers at all. That one missing piece fundamentally shaped his experience, and it is the same for your residents: lack of charging is starting to dictate where people stay, and increasingly, where they choose to live.

Why Strata Committees Are Feeling The Pressure

For strata committees and building managers, this growing demand for EV charging can feel like a lot of pressure. There is genuine enthusiasm from residents, but also real concern around cost, capacity, safety and fairness.

Common questions we hear include:

• Will our existing electrical infrastructure cope with EV charging demand?

• Who pays for upgrades, and how do we make this fair for non‑EV owners?

• How do we manage peak demand and avoid overloading our network?

• What about by‑laws, approvals and ongoing maintenance?

Left unresolved, these questions can stall progress for years. In the meantime, residents are forced into work‑arounds, from slow trickle‑charging off regular power points to competing for a single shared charger down the road, none of which are sustainable as EV numbers grow.

The Altogether Pathway: EV‑Ready With No Upfront Cost

This is exactly the challenge Altogether Group has set out to solve. Building on our experience as a sustainable multi‑utility and embedded energy network provider for more than 400 communities across New South Wales and Queensland, we have expanded our EV offering to meet different building types and demand profiles.

Altogether can design, fund, install and operate EV charging infrastructure for strata communities at zero upfront cost to the body corporate. We fully fund the charging backbone and associated infrastructure, and recover our investment over time through the electricity we supply. 

That means:

• No capital budget hurdles for the owners corporation.

• No long delays waiting for special levies or grant cycles.

• A practical, financially accessible pathway to becoming EV‑ready now, not “sometime later”.

Our expert team supports committees through the entire process: from site assessment and capacity checks, to helping secure body corporate approvals, updating by‑laws where needed, selecting appropriate chargers, and providing a robust user‑pays billing solution. We also manage ongoing maintenance so committees are not left to troubleshoot unfamiliar technology on their own.

Designed For Real‑World Strata Living

One of the most important lessons from Drew’s personal EV journey is that what people want is not a theoretical solution, they want something that works in everyday life. After a long drive, no one wants to spend 45 minutes sitting in a supermarket car park waiting for their car to charge if there is a better option.

Altogether’s approach is built around practical end‑of‑trip charging:

• A clear pathway from shared, common‑property chargers to dedicated chargers at individual parking spaces where the site allows.

• Active, network‑aware load management to keep the building safe and within its capacity limits.

• Per‑user metering and billing so EV drivers pay their fair share, and non‑EV residents are not subsidising them.

In many of our embedded network communities, we design the “energy backbone” with future EV charging in mind from day one, so that when residents are ready, the building already is too. For existing buildings, we can retrofit a staged solution that allows committees to start small and scale up as demand grows.

The Bigger Picture: Resilience, Cost Of Living And Sustainability

Beyond convenience, EV charging in strata communities connects directly to broader concerns that came up repeatedly at QStrata: cost of living, supply chain fragility and resilience. Geopolitical instability, particularly in the Middle East, is already influencing fuel prices and reminding everyone how vulnerable traditional fuel supply chains can be.

Residents are looking for ways to protect themselves from these shocks, through lower running costs, greater energy independence and more sustainable choices. Well‑planned EV charging, integrated with efficient embedded networks and, over time, potentially local renewables, is a key part of that shift in multi‑unit communities.

Altogether’s mission is to help communities thrive with smarter, more sustainable utility services, from power and water to data and now EV charging. For strata committees, that means turning a “problem in the basement” into a genuine asset for the community and a selling point for the building.

What Happens Next?

If there was one message we hope every conference delegate took away from Drew’s pitch, it is this: for many residents, the EV problem is not their car, it is the building they call home. The good news is that there is now a clear, low‑friction pathway to fix that.

If your committee would like to explore a tailored, no‑upfront‑cost EV charging pathway for your building, our team is ready to help you understand your options, your constraints and the most sensible next step. Whether you are fielding your first EV enquiry from an owner, or you already have several residents competing for limited charging options, we can help you design a solution that works for your community today and scales for tomorrow.

To get started, visit our EV charging page to learn more about how Altogether can support your building.