The National Roads & Motorists Association (NRMA) has confirmed that its public fast chargers will no longer be a free service for electric vehicle owners in Australia as it eyes of a large expansion plan for the country’s charging network.
Up until now, the NRMA’s 50kW DC fast chargers have been free for EV owners to take advantage of in New South Wales, a very generous policy that is set to come to an end in coming months.
According to a report from The Driven, NRMA’s Carly Irving-Dolan confirmed that the NRMA is developing a smartphone app that would be a point of payment for its DC fast chargers.
Speaking of the potential rates of its 50kW chargers, Irving-Dolan said that “we want to make sure it’s very competitive in terms of pricing”.
She added: “We’re not here to make huge amounts of money at all, it’s just to ensure that we can actually continue to build infrastructure for the users.”
Part of that infrastructure plan involves the expansion of its charging network from around 50 chargers to 185 chargers all around the country, a project estimated to cost around $90 million that has received $39m of Commonwealth funding for 117 of the planned 135 additional chargers.
Interestingly, the NRMA has singled-out some remote areas that are particularly in need of EV charging infrastructure that would receive an off-grid ‘trailer park’ of equipment, delivering up to 300kW, even 400kW of juice per station.
The NRMA estimates that Australia is in need of 30,000 public charging stations across the country.
