South Africa gets 43 new electric car charging stations — including the most powerful yet

Audi and Rubicon have announced the addition of 43 new electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across South Africa, including the country’s first 200kW ultra-fast charger.

Audi South Africa said the stations could charge up to 57 EVs simultaneously, regardless of model or brand, at varying capacities.

Among the chargers is a 200kW ultra-fast charger installed at the Mall of Africa in Midrand, Gauteng, a first-of-its-kind for South Africa.

When using this station, EVs that support 200kW or faster DC charging can fully recharge in minutes.

For example, the automaker said it would take roughly 15 minutes to refill the Audi E-tron GT’s 83.7kWh battery.

The system is backed by Mall of Africa’s PV solar installation, allowing it to operate without relying on Eskom’s coal-dependent grid.

The remaining stations consist of four 100kW (DC), eight 60kW (DC), five 25kW (DC) and twenty-five 22kW (AC) fast EV charger installations across six provinces.

The table below shows the distribution of the newly-added EV chargers from Audi South Africa and Rubicon.

For more specific locations, the stations have also been added to the GridCars map, which recently integrated with Google Maps.

200kW DC charging station location and status on GridCars map

The rollout forms part of the second phase of Audi’s investment in the country’s EV charging network.

In 2022, it launched 70 EV charging stations — including slower chargers — in partnership with GridCars.

“The commissioning of the first and second phase of charging infrastructure means that Audi and partners GridCars and Rubicon, have installed 76 fast and ultra-fast EV chargers across South Africa, representing about 28% of public charging stations in the country,” Audi South Africa said.

The partnership also includes a roaming agreement that allows billing cards to be interoperable across the two networks.

Audi and its partners have spent roughly R45 million on the charging station rollouts in the past two years.

EV charging station installed by Audi and GridCars

Rubicon Energy and E-mobility director Greg Blandford said mounting public interest in EVs would drive the need to integrate charging infrastructure, renewable energy, and energy storage systems.

“Local availability of more and more EVs, coupled with the increase in fossil fuel costs, will be a major catalyst for EV adoption in South Africa,” Blandford said.

Rubicon is also the official distributor of Tesla’s backup power products and home EV chargers in South Africa.

Audi South Africa head Sascha Sauer said although load-shedding was a factor that would influence the operation of EVs in South Africa, Audi’s charging network also employed solar-powered backups where possible to keep stations fully operational during outages.

In addition, Sauer said that the company’s E-tron models would not require daily charging due to ranges on a single charge being between 350-480km.

Other EV models sold in South Africa typically also offer over 300km of range per charge, including those available from BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo.

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