What I find terrifying is this took 6 months to build which is basically an industrial carport and a barn type building which they then call a "huge" charging station.
Yesterday I was reading an article that was promoting a "huge" new Electric Vehicle charging station that launched on Tuesday this week. The site is on the N3 highway which runs between Johannesburg and Durban and during peak holiday season will see 8000-10 000 cars per hour.
The mention of "huge" attracted my attention and "huge" in this context was 6 fast chargers and 2 slower AC chargers. The mind boggles as my head was thinking of 30 or 40 being standard and not a miserly 6+2. The fast charger to give you some context will charge your EV in around 60 minutes so if there are 6 cars hooked up already you are screwed. The chances are in your favor currently with only 5000 EV's on SA roads, but as that number rises then what. This "huge" site took 6 months to be built so the process is very slow.
I then wondered out of curiosity how many other charging stations are on this busy route and Google AI came back with 50. There will not be 50 available as some charging stations are on the other side of the freeway so giving them the benefit of the doubt there are 30 each way.
Seeing these numbers you would have to be a complete lunatic to even consider driving an electric car on this route as the chances are wherever you go there will be a queue on your arrival. Driving around the suburbs or town is fine but not on longer trips as at higher speeds the battery runs down that much faster. A trip to Durban from Johannesburg would need one or maybe two stops depending if you have the air-conditioning on and you are travelling the speed limit of 120km/h.
Going Green Is Like Organic Food - It Costs Much More
The average price to charge up is what shocked me the most as a 70 kwh battery will cost R560 on a fast charger and my current car for the same distance even with the new fuel increases would cost R150 less for the same distance travelled plus there is no waiting time for filling up. I always have been led to believe it was more economically viable to go electric and this is not the case.
I agree if you are travelling around your local area then you charge your vehicle at home for far less, but a public charging station is definitely not your friend due to the high costs per kwh. Even charging at home in SA now it would depend if you had solar or not because if you had solar and were still connected to the grid you could see this charge fluctuate between being free during the day or if using the grid R14.6 per kwh being charged making it almost double the cost of the already expensive public charging station. I will discuss the new home electricity charges in a different post as they are very confusing and sadly those on solar are paying 42% more per kwh than they were before solar. Make that make sense lol. The same will happen with EV's in hidden costs as it is not good for the thieving corrupt bastards
The funny thing is the energy from the sun is free and the rest of the world is pro alternative energy sources yet the EV is a non starter in SA due to the energy costs. The EV sales are on the rise and you clearly either have to be wealthy or well off to even consider purchasing one because currently there will be no savings versus a fuel car plus the infrastructure is not ready for this type of car.
Petrol stations want to sell fuel as that is obviously their major revenue income and the odd petrol station on long distance routes is having one fast charger on site like the Engen at the midway point between Johannesburg and Durban. One on site tells you they are not interested or the investment is not worth it currently because new sites being non petrol sites are opening up. This kind of reminds me of the banks not recognizing crypto yet we all know it is coming.