Australia's EV suburbs and its solar suburbs are different places. Brisbane is where they meet.

There are two ways an Australian household can run on its own electricity: a car that plugs in, and panels on the roof. You might expect the same places to do both. They mostly do not.

We matched the battery-electric share of registered cars in every postcode against its rooftop solar installations and its 2021 Census profile. The places with the most electric cars and the places with the most solar are close to opposite ends of the country's income and housing scale — and the small group that does both is concentrated, to a surprising degree, in one city.

Where the electric cars are

Across Australia, 248,720 of the 20.2 million light vehicles registered at the end of January 2025 were battery-electric: 1.23%. In a typical postcode the share is lower still, 0.86%, because electric cars are concentrated.

This is where they are concentrated, leaving out the capital-city CBDs (see the notes at the end for why):

Postcode	Suburbs	Battery EVs	Solar per 100 homes
2030	Vaucluse, Dover Heights NSW	5.2%	17.6
2063	Northbridge NSW	5.1%	33.6
2023	Bellevue Hill NSW	5.1%	11.8
2113	North Ryde, Macquarie Park NSW	5.1%	15.5
2015	Alexandria, Beaconsfield NSW	4.9%	8.7
2071	Killara, East Killara NSW	4.8%	25.0
2070	Lindfield, East Lindfield NSW	4.7%	25.3
2069	Roseville, Castle Cove NSW	4.7%	29.5
2073	Pymble, West Pymble NSW	4.6%	30.0
2605	Curtin, Garran ACT	4.6%	36.7

Sydney's eastern suburbs and upper North Shore, and inner Canberra. Around one car in twenty is electric, five to six times the typical postcode's 0.86%.

Now look at the last column. The typical postcode — the median of those we measured, from Clean Energy Regulator installation data — has 45.8 solar installations per 100 homes. Not one of these ten reaches it.

Aren't the outer suburbs leading the EV boom?

If you followed the news in August, this list will look wrong. The Australian novated-leasing industry body, NALSPA, published figures for April to June 2026 that ranked Tarneit first in the country for new battery-electric cars bought through novated leases under the Electric Car Discount, with Werribee second and Craigieburn, Clyde North and Cranbourne also in the top ten. The coverage said the outer suburbs were driving the boom.

Both are true, because they count different things. NALSPA counts how many cars were bought. We measure what share of a postcode's cars are electric.

Tarneit is one of the largest postcodes in Australia, with 102,928 registered vehicles. In our data it has the fourth-highest number of battery-electric cars of any postcode, 1,401 — and ranks 497th of 1,516 on share, at 1.36%. Werribee is second on count and 325th on share. Pymble is the other way round: 64th on count, 12th on share.

A big postcode leads on counts. A postcode where electric cars are common leads on share. If you want to know how likely your neighbours are to drive one, share is the number that answers it.

There is a second difference. NALSPA's figures are purchases made in 2026; ours are every car registered at the end of January 2025. If outer-suburban buying has accelerated since, through novated leases in particular, the next AAA release will show it.

Where the solar is

Postcode	Suburbs	Solar per 100 homes	Detached houses	Battery EVs
4504	Narangba QLD	99.3	96%	0.9%
4561	Yandina, Maroochy River QLD	99.2	92%	0.9%
3753	Beveridge VIC	98.2	100%	0.8%
4580	Cooloola Cove, Tin Can Bay QLD	98.0	86%	0.3%
4130	Cornubia, Carbrook QLD	97.7	91%	1.5%
6121	Oakford, Oldbury WA	97.6	99%	0.6%
4521	Dayboro QLD	97.6	98%	1.2%
6084	Bullsbrook WA	97.4	99%	0.5%
4341	Laidley QLD	97.4	96%	0.5%
5157	Kangarilla, Clarendon SA	96.7	99%	0.8%

Outer-suburban and semi-rural Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia, almost entirely detached houses. The electric-car share in these postcodes runs from 0.3% to 1.5% — around the national typical figure, and a fraction of the North Shore's.

Income decides one, the house decides the other

Two top-ten lists could be coincidence. The pattern holds across all 1,516 postcodes with enough vehicles to measure.

Sort them by median household income and split into five equal groups:

Household income (weekly, 2021)	Battery EVs	Solar per 100 homes
Lowest fifth (under $1,293)	0.30%	50.6
Second	0.57%	49.0
Middle	0.93%	48.1
Fourth	1.36%	38.4
Highest fifth (over $2,163)	2.30%	33.2

Electric cars climb steadily with income — nearly eight times as common in the richest fifth of postcodes as in the poorest. Solar does the opposite: the poorest fifth has the most of it.

That is not because lower incomes cause solar. Sort the same postcodes by the share of homes that are detached houses instead, and solar lines up far more cleanly:

Detached houses	Solar per 100 homes	Battery EVs
Under 61%	18.1	2.09%
61–80%	40.5	1.14%
80–89%	47.2	0.68%
89–94%	55.2	0.48%
Over 94%	57.0	0.54%

Solar needs a roof you control. Apartments rarely have one, and renters rarely decide what goes on it. Detached, owner-occupied houses are cheapest at the outer edge of the cities and in regional towns, which is where lower median incomes are too. Electric cars, meanwhile, are an expensive new purchase, and they sit where the money is — including in the apartment-heavy inner suburbs where solar is rarest.

One number sums each relationship up: a rank correlation, where 1 means two measures rise together in perfect step and 0 means no relationship at all. Across every postcode, electric-car share tracks income at 0.70 and solar tracks detached housing at 0.62. The two things we set out to compare, electric cars and solar, correlate negatively, at −0.36.

The places that do both

Take the postcodes in the top quarter for electric cars (at least 1.70%) and the top quarter for solar (at least 60.7 per 100 homes). If the two were unrelated you would expect about 90 postcodes to make both lists. Because they pull against each other, 42 do.

These are Australia's most electrified postcodes. The first twelve, ordered by how far they sit above both thresholds:

Postcode	Suburbs	Battery EVs	Solar per 100 homes
2769	The Ponds NSW	3.8%	83.3
4069	Chapel Hill, Kenmore QLD	4.0%	72.9
4123	Rochedale South, Rochedale QLD	3.7%	76.9
4070	Bellbowrie, Moggill QLD	2.9%	95.0
4073	Sinnamon Park, Seventeen Mile Rocks QLD	3.2%	77.9
4156	Mackenzie, Burbank QLD	2.8%	93.1
4112	Kuraby QLD	3.0%	83.0
4119	Underwood QLD	2.7%	82.9
4116	Calamvale, Drewvale QLD	2.9%	74.5
2155	Kellyville, North Kellyville NSW	3.1%	62.5
4110	Acacia Ridge, Heathwood QLD	2.2%	92.6
2479	Bangalow, Newrybar NSW	2.4%	85.5

Nineteen of the 42 are in Greater Brisbane. Seven are in Adelaide, mostly its foothills — Burnside, Belair, Blackwood, Aldgate. Five are in Perth and five in Sydney, and the Sydney five are all in its north-west and south-west growth areas — The Ponds, Kellyville, Schofields, Glenwood, Edmondson Park — not the eastern suburbs and North Shore that lead the country on electric cars.

None are in Melbourne. None are in Canberra, which has the highest electric-car share of any capital.

Why Brisbane

The capital-city figures show it directly:

Capital	Battery EVs (typical postcode)	Solar per 100 homes	Postcodes in the top quarter for both
Canberra	3.35%	37.2	0
Sydney	1.82%	24.9	5
Brisbane	1.68%	61.5	19
Melbourne	1.49%	27.7	0
Hobart	1.26%	27.1	0
Perth	1.24%	58.5	5
Adelaide	0.93%	59.0	7

Every other capital is strong on one measure at most. Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra have the electric cars, but a typical Sydney or Melbourne postcode has less than half Brisbane's solar, and a Canberra one about 60%. Perth and Adelaide have nearly as much solar as Brisbane, with fewer electric cars.

Brisbane pairs the highest solar of any capital with an electric-car share close to Sydney's. Its middle ring — Kenmore, Mackenzie, Underwood, Calamvale — is made of what drives both measures at once: detached houses, mostly owner-occupied, in suburbs with household incomes well above the national middle. Chapel Hill and Kenmore's median household earned $3,019 a week at the 2021 Census, in a postcode where 95% of homes are houses.

What this means if you are buying

Three things follow, and none of them are advice about whether to buy.

Solar comes with the house, not the suburb. A postcode figure tells you how common panels are around you, not whether the house you are looking at has them. Ask for the system size and age, and the last year's bills.

In an apartment suburb, solar is the exception. In the postcodes where fewer than 61% of homes are houses, there are 18 installations per 100 homes. If running a car on your own roof is part of the plan, that plan starts with a house.

Off-street parking matters more than the postcode. The inner suburbs lead on electric cars, but charging at home still needs somewhere to plug in. That is a question about the property, and the suburb-level data cannot answer it.

What we measured, and what we left out

Everything here is by postcode, not suburb. The electric-car and solar figures are published by postcode, so we used the ABS 2021 Census for postal areas to match them rather than stretching suburb figures across postcode boundaries. A postcode often covers several suburbs; we name the largest two.

Electric cars are counted where they are registered. A company that registers its fleet at an office address makes that postcode look electrified. We removed 11 postcodes where this is clear. One is Haberfield in Sydney, where registered electric cars jumped from 22 to 336 in a single year and reached 14.7% of vehicles. The others register more cars than they have residents while running well above the typical electric share — Mascot, Symonston, South Melbourne, West Perth and Osborne Park among them. We also left the capital-city CBD postcodes out of the first table: Sydney 2000 and Canberra's City both show 7.1%, but with few residents and many businesses we cannot tell company cars from residents' cars there. Two postcodes in that table, North Ryde and Alexandria, include large business districts, and some of their electric cars will be company cars too.

Electric-car figures are a January 2025 snapshot. They come from the Australian Automobile Association EV Index, the only source that still publishes registrations by postcode. The share has risen since; the pattern between places is what this article is about.

The solar figure is not the share of homes with solar. It counts small-scale installation certificates since 2001, per 100 occupied homes. An upgrade or a replacement counts again, systems up to 100 kW on small businesses are included, and nothing is removed when a system is decommissioned. Where the count passes 100 per 100 homes we do not publish a rate at all, because it usually means a growth area has far more homes than the 2021 Census counted. That hides 25 postcodes with at least 2,000 vehicles, most of them fast-growing outer suburbs, so the true top of the solar list is likely one of those.

Income and housing are from the 2021 Census. They are three to four years older than the car registrations. Growth areas have changed most since.

Correlation is not a reason. Income and housing type describe where electric cars and solar are, not why any household chose them. Hybrids, for comparison, follow income less closely than battery-electric cars do (0.53 against 0.70).

The data behind this

Electric-car registrations: Australian Automobile Association EV Index, registrations by postcode at 31 January 2025, for 2,544 postcodes. The NALSPA figures are as reported by Drive in August 2026. Solar: Clean Energy Regulator small-scale installations by postcode, to July 2026. Income, housing type and tenure: ABS 2021 Census of Population and Housing, General Community Profile by postal area. We include a postcode in the analysis when it has at least 2,000 registered vehicles and 1,000 residents, and in the solar comparisons when it also has at least 1,000 homes.