After the report was completed, Mr Jones said, the group members from government authorities such as Landcorp and Horizon Power took it to their relevant directors-general who then sent it to their Cabinet ministers. “We were expecting the government to at least comment on the document and say, ‘yes we can use this to formulate policy’ or ‘no we aren’t interested’, and we were constantly asking what was happening,” Mr Jones said. “But it went as far as Cabinet and just sat there.” The report was finally, quietly, released last month. It proposed a charging network with four major city sites (one in Joondalup, Fremantle, South Perth or Victoria Park, and one in Perth, West Perth or Leederville) each with six 350-kilowatt bays.

This would form the centre of a grid with 57 other two-bay sites spaced every 200 kilometres at existing service stations along major highways across WA, mostly providing 50-350 kilowatts (150 kilowatts or above where the grid allowed). While most 2019 electric car models charge at 150 kilowatts, it is expected that from 2020 most models will charge at 350. Minimum charging time under ideal conditions would be 6 minutes at a 350-kilowatt station, 15 minutes at a 150-kilowatt station and 44 minutes at a 50-kilowatt station. The report estimated this network would cost just $23.6 million and could be rolled out on a route-by-route basis to open up one destination at a time.

Most EVs would be in the metro area and up to 90 per cent of all charges would remain at homes or businesses during the work day or overnight, on "destination" chargers that are essentially a power point and trickle the energy in over several hours. The report said WA lagged well behind other states, and particularly far behind New Zealand, and that EVs would not become mainstream without statewide fast-charging infrastructure to address "range anxiety". At the time the report was published WA had just 13 public charging sites, all only 50-kilowatt, plus one Tesla-only site (in comparison, Australia had 57 sites plus 22 Tesla-only, while New Zealand had 169 plus six Tesla-only). UWA operated one in Crawley;

City of Swan operated one;

RAC had funded a network of 11 between Perth and Augusta, dubbed the 'Electric Highway';

Tesla had one site in Bunbury (exclusive use for Teslas); and

Tesla was planning another site in Perth. Chargefox and Fast Cities, both established in the eastern states, had plans to install a couple of charging sites in WA but were unlikely to spread further without government incentives.

Queensland's electric superhighway runs from Cairns to Coolangatta. Manufacturers were also reluctant to introduce new EVs into Australia as they perceived the market to be weak due to lack of subsidies and political support. Mr Jones said he got the feeling the government didn’t really want to move on electric cars, possibly because the gas industry wielded so much power. “They are pushing hydrogen fuel cell vehicles – a complicated, expensive, far-off-in-the-future way of maintaining charge on an electric car,” he said. “The gas industry loves the idea because they produce hydrogen and have the raw materials and they see it as their ‘clean coal’; their green way out.

“And because they are an established industry that returns royalties I think the government is listening to them, simply because there is no equivalent to the gas industry in the electric car world.” Mr Jones said in future, nickel and lithium mining giants might lobby in this space but for now a "chicken or the egg" situation remained. “The government may be suspicious of spending on something that doesn’t look used for a couple of years,” he said. “But ... if the stations were there and installed and people saw the fast charges at all their favourite destinations, they might be more inclined to pull the trigger.” There were other simple and inexpensive steps governments could take, he said, like free registrations or removing stamp duty on electric vehicles, which had encouraged Australian Capital Territory residents to make the switch.

Loading Government and utility fleets, which were buying new cars anyway, could set a 25 per cent electric car target, ensuring a flow-on of second-hand cars to the wider market. A state government spokeswoman said the working group was considering the report as part of developing a state electric vehicle strategy, an action plan to increase the share of electric vehicles in government fleets, and alongside the state climate policy under development. She said the government had introduced a new electric vehicle tariff to provide a discount to EV owners who charged their vehicles between 11pm and 4am, and various government agencies were trialling electric vehicles. She said the government had installed 17 charging stations across the state, including making new government buildings (such as the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation) EV-ready.