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Evnex has established itself in New Zealand, and it's starting to plug in to the Australian market. Founder and CEO Ed Harvey and commercial & technical account manager Tony Davis take us for a tour of the Christchurch office where they assemble and test their smart chargers.
Evnex founder Ed Harvey electrified a car for his final year of an electronics engineering degree at the University of Canterbury and, after graduating, he spent a few years working for a company that specialised in electric wheelchairs. He had been hunting for a more sophisticated and affordable charging solution for his own EV so in 2013 he started tinkering with some open source designs and Evnex was born a year later.
Since then, as Evnex's Tony Davis says, they've sold almost 10,000 chargers in New Zealand and Australia and its E2 model has gone from zero to almost 6,000 sales in just over two years.
While the EV sales growth rate has slowed in New Zealand after the removal of the Clean Car Discount, the trend over time is clear and EV sales are still on the up around the world. EVs are also very close to reaching price parity with fossil fuel cars and the lifetime running costs of EVs are significantly lower. Customers with rooftop solar - the cheapest form of electricity available to New Zealand households - can save even more.
For customers with solar, Evnex has developed a way to divert the electricity into the car as opposed to selling the excess back to the grid for a lower rate than you pay for it.
“People love it because if you are judicious about charging, you can have 90 percent plus of your driving come from your own solar,” Harvey told Kia Ora magazine.
While fast chargers are essential for longer trips with EVs and have helped reduce ‘range anxiety’, most trips are short and the average distance New Zealanders drive each week is around 200km. More than 80% of electric vehicle charging happens at home, and that’s where the ‘smart’ in smart charging comes in, with systems that can be automated to only charge during times of cheap, low-emissions electricity or reimburse employees for charging a company EV at home.
A range of businesses are now looking at upgrading their fleets to EVs because the economic benefits are clear but the charging infrastructure is a crucial part of that. Evnex is also the preferred charging partner of a number of established automotive brands.
The company is also experimenting with bidirectional charging, which is one of the most exciting developments in this space and will soon open up the field of vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-grid.
Financial commentator Frances Cook uses her own story to show that that an investment in solar and an EV significantly outperforms the stock market and fellow number cruncher Nadine Higgins says that if you do it right, EVs are cheaper to run and own; EV sales have climbed to their highest level since 2022 and are closing in on 2023's numbers and Go Rentals has just invested $2.3 million in some new Tesla Model Y Premiums; the gap between energy costs of diesel vans and utes and electric vans and utes is absolutely massive; solar is also going off right now, with one installer in Otago 448% above their sales target in March; Lightforce has gone back to the Barretts with a new TV ad; Wellington mayor Andrew Little explains its electrification strategy and Hutt City Council shares data showing how its fleet has gone from dirty Toyotas to cleaner EVs; Shenzen in China has electrified its public transport and taxis and that's come with big benefits - and some challenges; and a very simple illustration of the LNG terminal.
Read moreDownloadAs Minister of energy, climate and local government, Simon Watts had a great opportunity to push the country towards cheaper, cleaner and more reliable New Zealand-made energy. And that’s why we laid down a challenge and gave him the ‘MegaWatts’ moniker last year. Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey says he did some good things, like enabling more solar on farms, removing tax on solar exports, fixing onerous solar consenting requirements, putting pressure on the lines companies to pull up their socks, and getting the ball rolling on the Ratepayer Assistance Scheme. "But the LNG import terminal appears to have been a defining issue."
Read moreDownloadAfter ‘crunching the numbers’ and adding in new sources of ‘New Zealand-made energy’ to our equations, CEO Mike Casey has announced that Rewiring Aotearoa will be changing its name to Refuelling Aotearoa. There has been a huge amount of independently verified research showing electrification beats fossil fuels on economics, efficiency, emissions and energy security and that there is a huge opportunity for New Zealand to electrify, but the discovery of an infinite supply of snake oil in New Zealand has changed everything, he says.
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