Which one comes first? Electric cars or the charging stations? Players who want to deploy charging infrastructure will want to see a critical mass of EVs before investing heavily in charging infrastructure, while on the other hand, series-anxious consumers want the insurance of a charging network.
Locations with existing infrastructure, such as forecourts of fossil fuel retailers, have always been considered good candidates to house to some extent for electric vehicle charging facilities. Many sites will, of course, require some infrastructure upgrades to handle the new load of the electric vehicle charging stations, depending on the power requirements. As the transition to electric mobility accelerates, we are beginning to see more of the major fossil fuel retailers in various countries in Africa collaborating with players in the electric mobility space to offer services to support electric vehicles.
Recently, TotalEnergies Kenya collaborated with Ampersand to set up battery exchange and charging centers at TotalEnergies’ premises in Nairobi, starting with three premises, which are TotalEnergies Hurlingham, TotalEnergies Dagoretti and Mountain View. Now Zuva Petroleum in Zimbabwe has started operating electric vehicle charging stations at its premises in Zimbabwe. The first website was launched at 30ste of June. It is located on Piers Road in Borrowdale, next to Harare’s leading shopping center, Sam Levy’s Village. Zuva Petroleum says the new charging station will allow people to charge while shopping.
The premises is equipped with a 60 kW DC fast charger with CCS 2 clutch. They had to upgrade the supply to the filling station to accommodate the new DC fast charger. The 60 kW DC charger will allow one to charge, for example, the BYD E6, which has a 70 kWh Blade battery, within about an hour and a half.
There are a number of brand new all electric vehicle models that are now officially on sale in Zimbabwe, such as the BYD T3 of and the BYD E6. There are also several dealers who now bring used electric vehicles from Japan and the UK, but sales remain low. Potential customers interviewed have indicated that they would consider buying EVs if there is an extensive charging network. Zuva has more than 80 service stations across Zimbabwe that currently only serve internal combustion engine vehicles. Should they expand the charging station network to cover most of the service stations in their network where feasible, it would help a lot to establish a widespread charging network in Zimbabwe.
Images by Remeredzai
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