Electric Car Charging Stations
UNDER DEVELOPMENT – SOLAR HYBRID ELECTRIC VEHICLE (EV) CHARGERS
We are also exploring the feasibility of solar Electric Vehicle (EV) chargers to enable the penetration of electric vehicles in Africa. The global trend towards the full adoption of electric vehicles is inevitable and we aim to ensure that we contribute towards avoiding Africa becoming a technology dumping ground for obsolete and inefficient technologies.
Recent developments in the first world are influenced by:
- Environmental driven legislations
- Paris is to ban all internal combustion engine (ICE) cars including those fuelled by diesel and petrol by 2030.
- Britain is to ban the sale of all diesel and petrol cars and vans from 2040.
- All new Volvo cars to be electric or hybrid from 2019.
- Technology improvements
- EV range improved to ~400km.
- Rapid chargers can now charge in 8 – 20 minutes (Reference – ABB).
- Driving appeal and reducing cost of ownership
- Good performance of modern EVs.
- Lower maintenance costs. A modern internal combustion engine has over 2000 moving parts, the model S from Tesla has about 20.
As indicated in the chart, the transport sector is likely to have the most impact on oil demand in terms of fuel efficiency and the move towards hybrid and EVs. Therefore, post 2025 it’s an Electric Vehicle (EV) story as significant volumes of gasoline demand gets displaced (The rise and fall of black gold – Wood Mackenzie).
The total number of electric vehicles (excluding hybrids) sold in South Africa since they became available is less than 400 (0.6% of total versus 6.6% in Norway) mainly influenced by the following:
- Lack of infrastructure leading to “range anxiety”
- Whilst quite a few charging stations exist in the country, these tend to be concentrated in major populations centers with Gauteng boasting over 90 stations.
- Initial high costs and availability.
- Optimal Energy, Nissan, and BMW were the first vehicle manufacturers to introduce electric vehicles to South Africa, with the Leaf launched in 2013 and the BMW i3 launched in 2015.
- The BMW i3 retails for around R600 000 (fuel economy 0.0 L/100km) which is still expensive in comparision with an equivalent ICE vehicle such as a BMW 1 series which retails for between R450 000 to R 500 000 but its fuel economy is ~5.4 L/100km – the EVs will get increasingly cheaper but fuel prices will continue to be volatile.
- An EV such as a Nissan Leaf costs from 2p per mile in the UK, i.e., up to 5 times cheaper than an ICE.
- Solar hybrid EV chargers are likely to be cheaper (payback period to be established).
