South Africa’s electric vehicle charging landscape is about to shift dramatically, with Charge, the country’s leading off-grid EV charging innovator, preparing to flip the switch on its first commercial stations along the critical N3 corridor this May. The move marks a watershed moment for the local EV sector — one that promises to reshape how we think about charging infrastructure on our national highways.
Joubert Roux, co-founder and director of Charge, revealed to us that the company is days away from completing civil works at two strategically positioned sites: Charge N3 Tugela in KwaZulu-Natal and Charge N3 Roadside in the Free State. Battery systems are already en route to Durban, and both locations are on track for a mid-May launch. What’s particularly noteworthy is that Charge has already locked in a commercial power purchase agreement with electric logistics aggregator Zimi, ensuring the stations will turn a profit from day one — a remarkable feat for fresh infrastructure in an emerging market.
The timing here matters. Zimi secured reserved charging capacity across the N3 corridor through a three-year commercial deal inked in March, essentially underwriting Charge’s commercial viability before a single electron flows through the network. That’s not just smart business; it’s a strong vote of confidence from the freight and logistics sector in what Charge is building.
Off-grid EV charging reshapes South Africa’s transport future
The real innovation, though, isn’t just location or financing — it’s the technology itself. Charge’s approach to off-grid EV charging represents something genuinely novel in the global EV infrastructure space. The company has spent 15 months stress-testing its proof-of-concept station near Wolmaransstad, which has delivered a staggering 99.6% uptime on both chargers and communications links since going live in late November 2024. That’s not a theoretical experiment; that’s real-world validation of a system that, according to Roux, has never been attempted anywhere in the world before.
The concept itself addresses a fundamental problem with South Africa’s power infrastructure. Our national grid simply wasn’t designed to handle the sudden, massive loads that EV charging creates in rural areas. As Roux put it bluntly: “The cable going into a dorp that was designed to serve 500 people and five sheep farmers, all of a sudden you’ve got a thousand cars and 100 trucks going past, and they want to charge.” Off-grid solar and battery systems bypass this problem entirely, generating and storing energy independently while the vehicles queue up.
What makes Charge’s design particularly clever is its modularity. The stations can expand their solar panels, battery capacity, and dispensers independently as demand patterns become clearer. It’s not a one-size-fits-all infrastructure play — it’s adaptive, responsive, and scalable. The company has sized its stations to break even at just three vehicles per day at an average 55kWh charge, reaching operational profitability at nine vehicles daily. That’s a low threshold for rural highway locations.
Roux’s growth projections are ambitious but grounded. He reckons the full planned national network of 120 stations will be profitable once South Africa hits 60,000 total EVs — a threshold he believes is creeping up faster than most analysts assume. He points to Audi alone now selling more EVs in South Africa than the entire market shifted in 2024, and predicts local EV sales will cross 5% of new vehicle sales next year. Historically, that 5% mark has been the tipping point where EV adoption accelerates dramatically in other markets.
The N3 expansion may even outpace planning. Roux hinted that demand on the Johannesburg-Durban corridor could force acceleration of capacity additions sooner than originally scheduled. After the N3, Charge will roll out stations along the N1 between Cape Town and Musina, followed by the N6 between Bloemfontein and East London. The initial national footprint will span 60 stations at 300km intervals, densifying eventually to 120 stations at 250km intervals.
On the funding front, Charge has already secured R100 million from the Development Bank of Southern Africa and is finalising a matching private round through tokenisation platform Mesh and London-based African Merchant Capital. A public offering is planned for later this year, though notably not on the JSE — Roux dismissed the local bourse as better suited to late-stage institutional capital rounds than the early-stage development capital that companies like Charge require.
Roux’s longer-term vision extends far beyond South Africa’s borders. He envisions as many as 630 truck charging stations needed to electrify Africa’s major freight corridors — a build-out he compares to how mobile telecommunications leapfrogged fixed-line infrastructure across the continent. “I think we are at one of those moments like when the internet became a big thing and cell phones were launched,” he told us. It’s a bold comparison, but given what Charge is achieving, it’s not without merit.
The company’s success on the N3 this May will speak volumes about whether this off-grid model can genuinely transform how South Africa approaches EV infrastructure in the years ahead.