Back in October, we brought you news of new fast chargers for electric vehicles by Chargefox. The network is an ultra-rapid electric vehicle (EV) charging network for modern EV’s.
If you have a vehicle that supports the new charging standards, you could add around 400km of range, by charging for as little as 15ish minutes. That’s crazy fast, even faster than Tesla’s superchargers and approaching the few minutes it takes to fill a regular fuel tank.
Part of the planned 21 sites along major interstate freeways along the east-coast of Australia, today I got to see the first site at Euroa in person, on the way to Melbourne to returned the Mazda CX8.
The site features 4 recharges, 2 from AAB and 2 from Tritium. This certainly doesn’t have the same unified look as the Superchargers do and given it’s created to support multiple EV manufacturers, payments aren’t as slick as just being charged to your existing account. Instead you tap and pay, or grab the Chargefox mobile app.
As you’ll spot in the photos, 2 of the 4 chargers are currently not working, with signs that read ‘Sorry, Temporarily out of service. Commissioning in progress.’ Lets hope that’s resolved soon.
In terms of the charging types, you’ll see the offer 2 different connectors, as is the current state competing EV charging standards. There is suggestions online that we may see the version of Tesla’s Model 3 that arrives in Australia, would offer a Combined Charging System (CCS type). If that were the case, Model 3s could charge here, or head down the road in Euroa to the 6-bay Supercharger.
Separated from the charge bays themselves, is an array of large boxes, housing the transformers that deliver the power to your vehicle, fast. You’ll also see a ground-mounted solar array, which would assist in reducing the cost of power from the grid.
Chargefox has also received funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to complete the network rollout.
Also its great to see that Tesla Superchargers aren’t the only ones who struggle to keep out ICE vehicles from their EV bays.