Electric vehicle charging network Evie Networks’ boss Chris Mills is hoping its tie-up with the $7 billion fuel giant Ampol is the first step in helping service stations make the transition from petrol bowsers to charging stations.
Backed by coal baron Trevor St Baker, Evie is working with newly rebranded Ampol on a pilot program to install charging stations at six locations. It is part of Evie’s goal to roll out a network of 42 electric vehicle charging stations across Australia’s east coast and Mr Mills said the partnership offers a glimpse of the infrastructure that will be needed to cater to the influx of electric vehicles on Australian roads.
“It’s a disruptive technology as far as the petrol industry is concerned,” he said.
“The petrol retailers are all looking at this and trying to understand what it might mean for them and partnering with us gives [Ampol] insight into what are the behaviours of an electric vehicle driver. There’s a natural win-win.”
The stations will enable ultra-fast charging of electric cars in 15 minutes with the first of the charging stations opened at a service station at Avenel, 115 kilometres north of Melbourne, last week.
Mr Mills would not disclose the financial terms of the deal but said Ampol’s stations were a perfect testing ground for the technology, with the sites located at strategic locations along freeways.
An expansive charging network is vital to driving up the uptake of electric vehicles in Australia, which made up 0.7 per cent of the million new cars sold last year. Mr Mills said a lack of accessible charging stations remains the major hurdle to faster adoption of electric cars and there was a risk that manufacturers could stop making right hand drive vehicles if demand for them remained subdued.
“If we’re not careful, if we’re not sending bankable demand signals to the automotive manufacturers, you know, we run the risk of allocations just not coming to Australia,” he said.
Alan Stuart-Grant, Ampol’s executive general manager of strategy and corporate development, said the pilot with Evie provided an opportunity for Ampol to test how electric vehicle charging could be integrated into traditional service stations.
“Ampol’s national network of retail sites, along Australia’s major highways and close to existing high-traffic road infrastructure in metropolitan areas, makes us uniquely placed to play a key role in the delivery of EV charging,” he said.
Evie is backed by coal entrepreneur Mr St Baker through the St Baker Energy Innovation Fund. Mr St Baker is also behind Australian electric vehicle charging station manufacturer Tritium, whose success in overseas market was a catalyst for the birth of Evie.
“He saw that wasn’t happening in Australia, because no one was promoting the takeup of electric vehicles and so he thought to himself ‘I need to seed the industry’,” Mr Mills said.
“So the genesis of an Australian electric vehicle charging network was born.”
Evie was awarded a $15 million grant by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency last year to assist in designing the network. However, Mr Mills said both state and federal governments needed to do more to encourage electric car use.
“I think the absence of any meaningful federal government policy is a bit of a bummer.”
“You know, it’s a hand brake,” he said.
Extracted from Brisbane Times