Ev Charging Stations In South Africa: Expansion Paves Way For Electric Car Boom

Underpinning this growth is the parallel development of the infrastructure that supports the everyday use of electric vehicles: charging stations. According to global charging station finder app PlugShare , there are just under 400 publicly available charging stations in South Africa - from zero or close to it just 15 years ago.

GridCars is one of South Africa's leading charging point service providers - and the oldest. Registered in 2009, GridCars started life as an automotive manufacturer but quickly pivoted into charging infrastructure when it realised there was a market gap waiting to be exploited.

GridCars began its EV charging station roll-out in earnest in 2014 and now has a network of around 100 publicly accessible charging stations across South Africa, said CEO Winstone Jordaan in an interview this week with TechCentral. He said about 85 of these charging stations support DC direct current fast charging, while the rest utilise slower AC alternating current technology.

"Our first chargers went into the ground in late 2013 - a year before the first Nissan Leaf came to South Africa," Jordaan told TechCentral in an interview earlier this week.

Following a decision to establish an electric mobility unit, Rubicon in 2022 began building charging stations for OEMs like Audi and BMW, with work on its own charging network commencing later that same year. Of the 110 chargers Rubicon has built nationwide, 80 are owned and operated by Rubicon.