Chargefox CEO on snakes, ants and other challenges facing Australia's EV expansion
Australia's EV market is growing fast, and so is the infrastructure surrounding it.
Chargefox has the biggest network of electronic vehicle chargers in Australia, although that's actually a somewhat misleading statement. The company doesn't make or install its own chargers. Instead, it's the Uber or AirBNB of EV charging: A platform that connects customers to operators. But in this case, the operator is a EV charger instead of a home owner or a taxi driver.
The company was founded in 2017, and was bought by Australian Motoring Services — an organisation owned by the NRMA, RACV and the four other state motor service bodies — last year in a deal that valued it at $56 million. Its working goal is to have 5000 EV chargers on its network by 2025.
The following is our conversation with Chargefox CEO John Sullivan about the company and the challenges of Australia's EV industry.
When you started you were going to create your own hardware right?
Chargefox was formed by a group of like-minded individuals who wanted to promote the conversion of cars from ICE [internal combustion engine] vehicles to electric vehicles. But to do that there needed to be public charging infrastructure made available for manufacturers other than Tesla, who at the time were the only company that had a charging mechanism the public could use.
