EVX is on a roll. Just this week, the EV charge point operator (CPO) won a contract with Victorian Auto assistance company RACV to install 40 chargers on streets across the state. And last week, it announced it had won part of the New South Wales government’s $2.8 million EV charging infrastructure program and roll out around half of the planned 436 kerbside charging spaces.
RACV said its commercial energy solutions team will be working with the charger company to bring its first two installations on High Street and Warner Avenue in Ashburton in Melbourne to life in the coming weeks.
Other installations will be rolled out according to the targets set by the City of Port Phillip, the City of Stonnington, and the City of Yarra.
RACV managing director and chief executive officer Neil Taylor hopes the partnership will encourage Victorians to transition to EVs.
“This strategic partnership between RACV and EVX will help provide Victorians with access to a diversified, best-in-class public EV charging network.”
EVX’s chief executive officer, Andrew Forster, said the option provides accessible charging for millions of people living in apartments, units, and inner-city dwellings without private parking or the ability to install home chargers.
The company said expansion of its network across Victoria and other Australian states is supported by another $2.4 million grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). It currently operates 100 chargers across NSW, with plans to install an additional 120 chargers across Victoria, NSW, South Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory within the next 10 to 12 months.
Forster told The Fifth Estate that the chargers were Australian-designed and manufactured and would be installed on any existing utility poles with no disruption to the power network.
The company owns a licence to modify utility poles, and each dual charging unit features two 22-kilowatt sockets, which take about three hours to charge a car from a low battery to around 80 per cent – the amount recommended for best practice.
However, while less expensive than other chargers, the units are not cheap due to using locally manufactured stainless steel and plastic panelling, as well as offshore manufactured electrical components, Forster said. He said his company prefers to own and operate the chargers rather than sell and operate them through the councils.
So how many of these do we actually need?
Forster said he was “pretty comfortable” with the current speed of rollout of kerbside chargers. The chargers can be installed in as little as four hours.
“We CAN do quite a number each week – there was one week with two locations, which is four charging points every single day for a month. We can do them very quickly, but [the question is] whether that’s absolutely necessary.”
“When we overinvest in infrastructure, you risk having stranded assets, which would translate through to higher costs for everyone to try and support underperforming sites.”
Forster said his company generates heat maps to determine the popularity of chargers, as well as the best areas to install them within an area, and any chargers to remove if they are not popular.
The hotspots
According to Forster, hot spots for EV charging are currently located around terraces, medium- to high-density housing, regional areas, townships, and highways. This also includes accessible areas, such as shops, recreational areas, and commercial precincts with offices.
Whether the area is suitable is determined based on five to six “parking adjacent use cases”, and the most well-utilised spots would be identified by whether the location meets two to three of these use cases. He adds that the company avoids installing directly outside single residential perimeters.
And councils are coming on board
Unlike charging stations, the utility pole chargers are “relatively straightforward” thanks to their licence to occupy poles – the same licence offered to telecommunication companies installing 5G cells on top of utility poles, Forster said.
Instead, the council would need to tackle the difficult parts, such as arranging for marked EV-exclusive parking spaces, preparing the area for new infrastructure, and installing parking metres.
Currently, the City of Sydney has parking meters with a four-hour limit, whereas some other councils offer two to three hours of parking, and some offer unrestricted parking.
“It’s becoming much easier over time, and as councils see more of these going up, it’s a lot less scary than what they perhaps think.”
Instead, the major cost barriers to the company are currently around electricity tariffs, costs from electricity distributors and other various costs incurred through the process – but “we are working with them to reduce those,” said Forster. “We’ve reduced our manufacturing costs, and these things naturally happen as we [install more chargers].”
Although there was no direct template to follow, the EV council provided a draft licensing agreement to facilitate the relationship between councils and CPOs, developed in collaboration with the Ryde council.
“It’s going to take a lot of different types of infrastructure to fill up a mix, in terms of what people are going to need over time.”
So who are the naysayers?
According to Forster, many councils are “up to speed” when it comes to these partnerships, “and some do it better than others”, so councils needed to reach out to other councils to share information and advice.
When he started in 2022, “there was a lot of fear around the model, but it’s becoming a lot more familiar and a lot less concerning for now. They see the opportunity for them but also their residents, and they are starting to see its pretty low risk.”
“We’ve got some that we’ve been trying to bring to the table for many months, if not years now, that are pretty fearful actually to do anything meaningful.”
Most receptive to the infrastructure are regional councils, says Forster, who realised that there were no regional councils that said no to the chargers.
“I think the fact that CPOs (chargepoint operators) are willing to go into those regions and make an investment at a relatively low or no cost to the councils – in regions that are often under-resourced – they are very welcoming to it.”
As for the naysayers, Forster said it becomes very obvious if you look at a map of EV charging stations, where the holes were.
But is this safe?
These pole-mounted chargers, made with public infrastructure-grade materials, are impact- and corrosion-resistant, and completely waterproof, Forster said. And because it is installed off the ground, the chargers can operate unimpacted in flood zones of up to 600 to 800 millimetres of rain, or more than half a metre. The units are also equipped with electrical safety features, including temperature monitoring and automatic cutoff.
Charger and battery fires are a commonly misunderstood topic, he added.
“There’s been none, as far as we’re aware, charging incidents of battery fires linked to charging in this country. They’re generally linked to damage – so if you’ve been in an accident and the battery is physically damaged, that can often cause…thermal runaway and fire.”
Battery chemistry, types, and car safety are the key factors to consider when deciding which cars to buy, Forster said.