Nabilah Safira
TechInAfrica – Now driving from Pretoria to Cape town with electric vehicle should be an easy feat, as GridCars, the largest installer of public EV charging stations in South Africa has finished its national EV highway rollout that connects the major cities and also some of South Africa’s busiest highway, according to the CEO of Alviva Holdings, Pierre Spies, whose company owns GridCars. The announcement proceeded on Tuesday (17/09), at the company’s annual results for the year-end of June 2019.
More electric charging stations are to be installed at some of Shell’s garages and are based on demand. This was rolled in February 2019, when Shell was reported to has sought the services of Gridcars for the stations’ installment. At the end of March 2019, 200 stations had been installed successfully in the urban areas and the highways, by the company. On GridCars’ public network, it offers a 60 kWh charging capacity for most of the EV charging stations, and this capacity can charge a Jaguar I-Pace to the percentage of 80 percent in just over an hour.
Previously, on September 2018, Gridcars collaborated with Jaguar Land Rover SA to create the Jaguar Powerway, which consisted of 22 charging stations located at varied fuel stations along the N1 between Gauteng and Cape Town, the N2 between Cape Town and East London, and the N3 between Gauteng and Durban.
Theoretically, the electric vehicle would have a maximum range of 470 km per charge, and this means a total of 3 stops last for approximately 1 hour, while a half each should be enough to take a passenger from Gauteng to Cape Town in the I-Pace. The stations are also packed with sockets for charging the plug-in hybrid vehicles, such as the Range Rover PHEV and the Mercedez-Benz C350e. Alviva’s revenue for this year topped R8.6 M from the electric charge-point, as stated by the company’s financial results.
Source: Mybroadband.co.za
