Energy15.10.2024

10× revenue in two years

South African energy and e-mobility company Rubicon has seen its revenue from electric vehicle (EV) charging surge tenfold — or 900% — in less than two years.

Rubicon is the official distributor of Tesla energy products and also supplies a wide range of residential and commercial solar and backup products from well-known brands like JA Solar, Trina Solar, and Synapse.

While household demand for solar has plunged in 2024 compared to 2023, Rubicon has seen a big boost in revenue from another segment — EV charging.

As of 30 September 2024, Rubicon was operating 83 public and dealer-based charging stations on its network.

That makes it second only to GridCars in terms of station count.

The company recently shared its EV charging station network usage report with MyBroadband, revealing an astounding increase in transactions and revenues.

Transactions increased from 311 in the first quarter of 2023 to 2,400 in the third quarter of 2024, a 672% increase.

In the year-to-date, Rubicon recorded 5,047 transactions on its network, compared with 2,721 for the entire 2023.

The amount of energy consumed at these stations also increased by 719% in 21 months.

While it asked MyBroadband not to share specific revenue amounts, we can confirm that the company’s quarterly charging revenue went from around the low tens of thousands of rand to several hundred thousands of rand.

The reason for the big increase in charging station revenues is simple — EV sales have increased substantially in the year-to-date.

Data from the National Automobile Association of South Africa (Naamsa) and Lightstone Auto show that 1,085 fully-electric cars were sold in South Africa in the first nine months of 2024.

That is already 153 more than the total number sold in the country in the entire 2023.

The biggest driver of these sales has been the Volvo EX30, which arrived in the first quarter of 2024 and had recorded 281 sales in the first half of the year.

Volvo’s most affordable EV helped it dethrone BMW as the top electric brand in the country for the first time since the latter introduced the i3 hatchback to South Africa in 2015.

Several more EVs are set to launch in the coming year, including more models from Chinese electric giant BYD.

While BYD has been selling two EVs in the country for some time, the sales of these models are not yet included in Naamsa or Lightstone Auto’s data.

Given that the company sells the cheapest EV in the country — the BYD Dolphin — and the Extended Range version of that has sold out — it is likely to have added a few dozen more sales to the actual tally.

Several other Chinese brands like Chery and GAC also plan to roll out fully-electric models in the next few months.

Rubicon plans to capitalise on the surge in local EV uptake in the coming years, with an ambitious plan to have 262 charging stations across the country by February 2025.

That would make it the biggest charge point operator (CPO) in South Africa.

The table below summarises the changes in charging station transaction volumes on Rubicon’s EV charging station network since the start of 2023.

PeriodTransactions on Rubicon networkQuarter-over-quarter change (%)
Q1 2023311
Q2 2023589+89%
Q3 2023797+35%
Q4 20231,024+28%
Q1 20241,045+2%
Q2 20241,602+53%
Q3 2024 2,400+50%
Overall increase+2,089+672%

Fastest charging stations particularly popular

Despite being in far shorter supply than sub-100kW stations, Rubicon’s report also showed that the biggest charging revenue drivers were its fastest DC charging stations with high speeds of 150kW and 200kW.

These higher speeds could also be contributing to the average duration per charging session declining slightly from around 1 hour and 53 minutes to 1 hour and 39 minutes.

The top four most-used charging stations were all located in shopping mall parking lots.

These are at the Canal Walk Shopping Centre, Mall of Africa, Somerset Mall, and Tygervalley Shopping Centre.

The most popular long-distance chargers were the Sasol Thanda Tau station on the N3 in the Free State, Caltex N4 Machadorp station in Mpumalanga, and Peregrine Farm Stall in the Western Cape.

Rubicon also captured data on the car brands and CPO platforms that accounted for the highest number of charging transactions in the year to date.

Volvo models led the way with at least 27% of charging sessions, followed by BMW cars with a minimum 26% share and Audi with 14%.

The actual shares of each brand is likely somewhat higher as the owners of these cars may use third-party CPO accounts like Rubicon Charge or GridCars ActiveCharge and not their dealer-provided account.

The chart below compares the percentage of users from each OEM or CPO brand that used Rubicon’s stations in the year to date.

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