Most Australians will be driving electric-powered cars within 20 years, an expert in transport believes.

The dirt on electric cars

Most Australians will be driving electric-powered cars within 20 years, an expert in transport believes, but Victoria's continued reliance on brown coal for the electricity to power such cars would be "a disaster" for the environment.

Professor Gernot Spiegelberg, who heads a thinktank on electric-car development and infrastructure at German technology multinational Siemens, predicts electric cars' popularity would soar by 2030 as range and price restrictions are lifted.

In Melbourne to address the International Conference on Sustainable Automotive Technologies, he says fewer commuters in coming decades will ever need to travel more than 100 kilometres in their cars.

Better and cheaper transport on trains and planes will help convince drivers to supplement longer road trips with communal transport, effectively eliminating the anxiety associated with range-restricted plug-in cars.

"Perhaps the individual mobility of the passenger will only have a need [to drive] for the first 100 kilometres and the last 100 kilometres," Spiegelberg says. "Between this, or above this 100 kilometres, we use trains or aeroplanes. This is what we think, especially for the younger generation."

But hurdles remain to the generation of clean energy, Spiegelberg says. "There is a huge problem for Australia to move to renewables because your energy generation is really … cheap," he says. "But, from my point of view, it's a disaster because it's a lot of smoke you are creating. I think, if you charge an electrical car with coal, it's not the best way for the global environment."