These are the words as this site uses them, and where a term has a number behind it in the directory, the number is in the definition. Each one has its own anchor, so a definition can be linked or quoted on its own.
Find a term · 35 definitions
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Current, power and energy
The four words that cause most of the confusion, then the billing terms behind a price.
AC#
Alternating current. What the grid supplies, and what an AC charger sends down the cable. An AC charger does not charge the battery directly: the car turns AC into DC first.
DC#
Direct current. What a battery stores, and what a DC fast charger feeds it from a rectifier in the station rather than in the car. That is why the car's onboard charger plays no part in a fast stop.
kW#
Kilowatt: a rate of power. A post rated 150 kW can move 150 kWh in an hour if it holds that rate for the hour, which a battery rarely lets it do from start to finish.
kWh#
Kilowatt-hour: a quantity of energy. A 60 kWh pack holds 60 kWh, and half an hour at an average 100 kW puts 50 kWh into it. The battery is sized in kWh, the post in kW, and the two are not interchangeable.
EVSE#
Electric vehicle supply equipment: the station side of the job — cabinet, cable, connector and controls. A “charger” on this site means the same thing.
Connector vs charger#
The connector is the plug on the cable; the charger is the equipment behind it. The same type 2 connector sits on a 3.3 kW post and a 22 kW wall unit, so the shape tells you what fits, not how fast.
Onboard charger#
The AC-to-DC converter inside the car. It caps AC charging whatever the post offers: a 22 kW post gives a car with an 11 kW onboard charger 11 kW.
Public tariff#
The per-kWh price a network publishes for a station. 828 of the 1,338 stations here list one, and the median is A$0.50. Session fees, idle fees and taxes sit outside it.
Demand charge#
What a utility bills a site for its peak power draw, rather than for the energy it sells. Fast sites carry a large one, which is part of why a public kilowatt-hour costs more than a home one.
Connectors
The plugs this country's stations and cars list, and the count this directory holds for each of them.
Type 2#
IEC 62196 Type 2, the seven-pin AC connector on almost every electric car sold outside North America. 838 stations here list it, 199 of the 211 models list it as an AC inlet, and the plug carries up to about 22 kW depending on the supply. A Type 2 socket takes a Type 2 plug and nothing else: the same car needs the larger CCS2 plug for a DC fast stop.
CCS2#
Combined Charging System Combo 2: the Type 2 shape with two DC pins added underneath, so the same socket also takes a Type 2 plug for AC. 377 stations list it, 268 of them at 50 kW or more, and 197 of the 211 models list it as a DC inlet. The directory's fast-charging counts are almost all this plug.
CHAdeMO#
An older DC fast standard, large and heavy, that Japan's makers used before CCS. 149 stations here list it, 90 at 50 kW or more, and 2 of the 211 models use it. It does not fit a Type 2 or CCS2 socket without an adapter, and suitable adapters are uncommon.
Adapter#
A physical bridge between two connector types. It fixes the plug, not the permission and not the rate: the session runs at the lower of the two limits, and a station can still refuse a car that fits.
Charge port#
The socket on the car. Most cars have one port: an AC Type 2 socket for slow charging, with the DC pins of CCS2 beneath it for fast stops. It is the port, not the badge, that decides which cable fits.
Charging sessions
From a wall socket to a 350 kW cabinet, and the words that describe what happens at the post.
Household socket#
A 230 V household socket at 10 A draws about 2.4 kW into the car, adding roughly 11 to 14 kilometres an hour. 130 stations here list a wall outlet: an overnight top-up, not a plan for a trip.
AC charging#
The slow half, through a Type 2 socket and the car's own AC-to-DC converter. A single-phase wallbox at 32 A draws 7 kW and adds about 34 to 39 kilometres an hour; a three-phase one at 16 A per phase draws 11 kW and adds 53 to 62 kilometres. The 838 Type 2 stations here cover both, and the car's onboard charger caps what it accepts from either, so a 22 kW box does not make an 11 kW car faster.
DC fast#
DC charging at 50 kW or more. 268 stations here report 50 kW or more and 163 report 150 kW or more. The rate tapers as the battery fills, so the figure is a ceiling, not an average.
10–80%#
The usual fast-charging window: it skips the slow top of the pack, so a road-trip stop is measured this way. The quickest car here, the XPeng X9, quotes 12 minutes from 10% to 80%.
Taper#
The fall in power as the battery fills, managed by the car to protect the cells. It is why the last 20% of a fast charge takes as long as the first 50%, and why a 350 kW rating is not a promise.
Load sharing#
When a site splits its available power between cars. Two cars on one cabinet can each get half of what the label says, which is worth knowing at a busy site.
Preconditioning#
Warming or cooling the battery before a fast stop so it can take full power when you plug in. It is usually a car setting or a navigation instruction, and it is the easiest way to shorten a cold-weather stop.
Destination charger#
A Tesla Wall Connector at a hotel, restaurant or workplace, listed as a Destination charger. AC charging, so an hours-long stop. 42 sites here carry that listing.
Supercharger#
Tesla's DC fast network, 150–350 kW at the cabinet. A stop is measured in minutes, billing runs through a Tesla account, and a growing number of sites admit other makes.
Idle fee#
A charge for staying plugged in after charging finishes, billed on top of the per-kWh price. It is not in any median on this site.
Session fee#
A fixed charge to start a session, added to the per-kWh price by some networks. On a short top-up it can be the larger half of the bill.
Stall#
One dedicated charging space, which is how capacity is counted here: 2,455 stalls across the directory. A stall is never the same thing as an outlet, and the two are not added together.
Outlet#
A socket you plug your own cable into — a 15 A caravan socket at a park, or a three-phase outlet at a showground, for instance. 136 outlets in this directory are counted separately from stalls because they are not a dedicated charger.
Caravan socket#
The 15 A socket at a caravan park, with a wider earth pin than a household plug, so an ordinary lead will not fit. 61 stations here list one, at roughly 2.4–3.6 kW: an overnight charge, and only with a lead rated for a continuous 15 A draw.
Range, cost and V2X
How efficiency, test cycles and vehicle-to-load are described on the vehicle pages.
Kilometres per kWh#
How far a car travels on one kilowatt-hour. A compact EV returns about 5.6 kilometres per kWh at the consumption the catalogue publishes, which is the figure this site uses when it turns a tariff into a driving cost.
Cost per kilometre#
The price of a kilowatt-hour divided by the distance the car returns from it. At the directory's median tariff and 5.6 kilometres per kWh, a kilometre costs about A$0.09.
WLTP range#
The figure on this site's model pages: 211 models, each labelled with the test it came from. A WLTP figure usually reads more optimistic than the American EPA figure for the same car, so a range from one is not a range from the other.
WLTP#
The Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicles Test Procedure, the European efficiency and range test. It is the test behind this site's range figures, reviewed by the community that keeps the catalogue.
V2L#
Vehicle-to-load: using the car's battery to run tools or appliances through an outlet, usually 2–3.6 kW from a socket in the cabin or the charge port. The catalogue here does not publish an output figure, so no model page quotes one.
V2H#
Vehicle-to-home: using the car as a house battery or backup supply. It needs a bidirectional charger and a switch fitted to the house, so a car that supports it is not a backup supply on its own.
V2G#
Vehicle-to-grid: exporting power from the car back to the grid. It is a subset of V2H work, and it needs a utility or aggregator agreement on top of the equipment.
How these definitions are counted
- If a figure is in a definition, it is a count from the same build-time data as the directory, the connector hubs and the model pages — not an estimate and not a market total.
- A station can list more than one connector and a car can have two inlets, so connector counts overlap. Nothing here adds them into a single total.
- Stalls and outlets are separate counts on purpose: a caravan socket at a park or a three-phase outlet at a showground is an outlet, not a stall, and the two numbers are never summed.
- The plugs defined here are the ones this country's stations and cars list, and the range figures carry the test they came from: a WLTP range is not an EPA one, and a distance is in this country's unit.
A term that is missing can be asked for on the contact page, and the methodology page explains where the numbers behind these definitions come from.