Tim Washington, co-founder and CEO of EV charging provider JET Charge, talks on the Fleet News Group podcast about the rapid rise of EVs in Australia, the start-up’s growth and evolution since it began more than a decade ago as an installer for Tesla home charging stations in Melbourne, and its trial of a charge-as-a-service business model.
When we spoke in late April, the latest data showed EVs sold in Australia in March was almost 10 percent of all new car sales for that month, a startling change from 1-2 percent of sales just a few years ago. Meanwhile EV sales in the UK and the US are slowing.
“I think Australia will be one of the countries that really bucks the trend in relation to EV uptake,” said Washington, adding, “And the main reason for that is because we are far more receptive to Chinese-made vehicles than the US and Europe, because we have no manufacturing to protect.”
And, he continued, “They’ve only just started exporting to the rest of the world. The reason you haven’t seen most of these brands is because they’ve been basically satisfying demand in China. As competition increases, and they look to grow their market share, they will start exporting. Australia is one of the Western countries that accepts these vehicles. And so I actually think we’re going to see Australia outpace the rest of the world in vehicle adoption.”
Talking about JET Charge, which Washington co-founded with his wife Ellen Liang: “Our journey has really been reflective of the journey of the EV industry as a whole. As the EV, and EV charging industries, have grown, different requirements have popped up and required suppliers to meet different needs,” said Washington.
“These days, we call ourselves a turnkey or end-to-end infrastructure technology business. We are responsible for advisory and engineering of sites mostly for corporate and enterprise clients. We will design the sites for them, we will supply the hardware. We project manage the entire build, we write the software that controls those charging stations, both on site and in the cloud. We provide the asset operations platform that allows us to make sure the charging stations are up and running. And in the future, we will help our customers take the energy in those vehicles and monetize it on the electricity grid with our electricity partners. And so we do that complete end to end. It has been an incredible, I would say bumpy ride through the 12 years.”
Last year, JET Charge won support from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to trial its CaaS business model, that’s particularly suited for fleet operators as it removes all the operational risk from a charging perspective that is associated with a fleet’s transition to electric vehicles. Some of the risks include having chargers installed at drivers’ homes, some of whom move elsewhere. Another is that the fleet operation managing its own charging assets needs to build a team with capabilities to manage the charging infrastructure.
“We came up with a very flexible month-to-month subscription, where JET Charge retains ownership of the hardware, but we take away all of that operational risk, as well as that ownership and technology risk. And because we do so many installations on a day-to-day basis across homes, and apartments and commercial buildings, we said we’re best placed to kind of take that risk, and that it’s a very predictable monthly cost.”
Integral to the CaaS model is that JET Charge takes ownership of the charging infrastructure and responsibility for maintaining it. That will also involve designing their own charging stations with more modules that can be swapped out for maintenance and repair events. That in turn will lead to better outcomes from a circular economy perspective, with greater use and reuse of resources.
In an upcoming Part 2 of Tim Washington’s podcast recordings with Fleet News Group, topics discussed include fleets transitioning to EVs and the questions they need to answer.
Washington, who is a former chair of the Electric Vehicle Council, also talks about the need to get right as quickly as possible policy settings on apartment building charging, depot connection to the grid and fire risk and safety of charging electric vehicles.
