When property developer Mirvac introduced its first electric car charging points at its shopping centres in October 2017, it would typically attract just 300 charging “events” a month.
Now, its Broadway Shopping Centre in inner Sydney alone attracts 1500 customers for its free charging each month. The company is now looking for a rapid expansion beyond the dozen centres offering the service.
“The uptake has been amazing,” Tim Weale, national manager for Mirvac’s retail solutions division, said. “It’s actually been really surprising.”
While a political debate has raged over federal Labor’s plan to aim for half of all new car sales in Australia to be electric by 2030, companies like Mirvac have been quietly expanding the infrastructure to support the electrification of transport whether the customer wants to charge at home, the office or while shopping.
The company’s South Eveleigh development in inner Sydney, will provide multiple electric vehicle (EV) charging points for the Commonwealth Bank, one of its tenants in the soon-to-be-finished project. In Melbourne, Mirvac’s biggest EV recharging site is its Moonee Ponds shopping centre.
The public charging facilities will be vital if the EV industry is to meet its potential and where car owners are able – or choose – to recharge their vehicles will also be key to how the electricity grid will handle a possible jump in power demand.
‘Trickle’ up
Behyad Jafari, chief executive of the Electric Vehicle Council, said more than 90 per cent of charging takes place at a driver’s home or office. Residential owners plugging into their power points for “trickle charging” probably account for 60-70 per cent of that total.
The availability of public charging sites “has been the area that’s been lagging the most”, Mr Jafari said. Not only has absence of such facilities put off potential EV owners worried about their ability to recharge for longer journeys, it has also deterred renters or those without off-street parking.
Australia has one of the developed world’s lowest take-ups of EVs, with such cars accounting for 0.2 per cent of new car sales last year.
Charging and shopping longer
Mr Weale said regular shoppers stay in the centre for 46 minutes compared with EV owners who stay on average for 106 minutes. The extra time suggests the investment in chargers – totalling in the hundreds of thousand dollars – is worthwhile.
Charge rates are the equivalent of about 100-km worth of driving for each hour plugged in, a pace that will increase as Mirvac adds super-fast chargers, he said.
Greg Johnson, Stockland’s National Sustainability Manager, said demand had increased steadily at the 25 retail centres it operates with EV charges.
“We have installed additional points at centres where there has been strong demand, and we plan to install additional EV chargers across our portfolio,” he said.
“As customer comfort with battery range and access to charging infrastructure increases, and the market introduces more makes and models, we’ll continue to monitor uptake and trends to inform our future expansion options.”
‘They’re all coming’
David Finn, chief executive and founder of Tritium – Australia’s only designer and manufacturer of EV chargers – said the expansion of EV facilities is happening quickly. It’s now possible to drive from Sydney to Brisbane with two 15-minute fast-charge stops, he said.
Some 60 new EV models will also hit the market in the next three years, up from 11, filling virtually all sectors of the market. “They’re all coming,” Dr Finn said.
The Brisbane-based company estimates it supplies about 95 per cent of the fast-charge infrastructure in Australia and half that of nations such as Norway, where almost 60 per cent of new cars sales in March were electric. A 50-kilowatt charger costs about $30,000, and Australia probably has about 100 such outlets.
Dr Finn said super-fast charging could offer drivers 200-km of range for just five minutes waiting.
Suitably-equipped homes could also be powered by returning EVs discharging their batteries. That would ease rather than exacerbate grid peaks, saving on infrastructure spending, Dr Finn and Mr Jafari said.
The US may offer some clues, where workplace charging “is really huge”, Dr Finn said.
“Australia’s just starting to wake up.”
Extracted from The Sydney Morning Herald