Electric Vehicle charging infrastructure is expanding rapidly and today, we have a big announcement for Victoria, specifically regional Victoria from Evie Networks.
Evie Networks has announced that they will be deploying EV chargers in 55 towns across regional and rural Victoria.
This massive expansion of EV charging options is thanks to co-funding from the Victorian Government, unsurprisingly not the Federal Government, despite the election dollars flowing freely to other industries.
Powered by 100% renewable energy, Evie will deploy Tritium 50kw fast chargers and while we’d love to see their faster 350kW chargers, these are capable of providing up to 50km of range in just 10 minutes.
As someone who owns an EV and lives in regional Victoria, with relatives in other regional Victoria towns, this announcement is really appreciated.
These new chargers add to Evie’s 20 existing regional locations, and offerings in metro Victorian locations.
Electric Vehicle charging options continues to be one of the first questions potential EV owners ask and thankfully announcements like this go a long way to answering that question.
While many EVs regularly travel up and down the Hume Hwy between Melbourne and Wodonga thanks to charging options at Euroa and Avenel, there have been significant gaps across the state.
For example, if you live in Wodonga and want to travel to Echuca, your charging options along the 220km journey are really limited. While many or most EVs would be able to make the trip to Echuca, the return trip for many models would require a top-up to get home.
Charging options along this route include 1x 50kW charger at Yarrawonga or a diversion through Shepparton. Once the new chargers are in place, trips like these, across the vast regional Victorian landscape to see friends, families or go for holidays, will become far easier.
Having 1x 50kW charger at a location is a start, but certainly not at all the end solution to what will be an onslaught of families adopting EVs over the coming years. We are likely to see more chargers from competitors like Chargefox and the leader in this space, Tesla.
When Tesla deploys Superchargers they plan for future growth and frankly have the vehicle sales to support it. Tesla often installs a 6-bay Supercharger at 120kW or higher (v3 is 250kW) when they do commit to a location.
My advice for people travelling and planning to use 3rd party charging networks for their Electric Vehicle is to download and create an account for both Evie and Chargefox and check their charger availability before venturing to a remote town and hoping it’s free. Plugshare is a great resource to understand overall charger availability, but not everyone checks-in when they charge, so it’s not a good determiner of availability.
