  As outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, electric
vehicles offer the greatest decarbonisation potential for land transport, in
addition to other benefits, including reduced fuel and maintenance costs,
improved air quality, reduced noise pollution, and improved national fuel
security. Owing to these benefits, governments worldwide are planning and
rolling out EV-favourable policies, and major car manufacturers are committing
to fully electrifying their offerings over the coming decades. With the number
of EVs on the roads expected to increase, it is imperative to understand the
effect of EVs on transport and energy systems. While unmanaged charging of EVs
could potentially add stress to the electricity grid, managed charging of EVs
could be beneficial to the grid in terms of improved demand-supply management
and improved integration of renewable energy sources into the grid, as well as
offer other ancillary services. To assess the impact of EVs on the electricity
grid and their potential use as batteries-on-wheels through smart charging
capabilities, decision-makers need to understand how current EV owners drive
and charge their vehicles. As such, an emerging area of research focuses on
understanding these behaviours. Some studies have used stated preference
surveys of non-EV owners or data collected from EV trials to estimate EV
driving and charging patterns. Other studies have tried to decipher EV owners'
behaviour based on data collected from national surveys or as reported by EV
owners. This study aims to fill this gap in the literature by collecting data
on real-world driving and charging patterns of 239 EVs across Australia. To
this effect, data collection from current EV owners via an application
programming interface platform began in November 2021 and is currently live.
