Indooroopilly becomes Brisbane’s largest EV charging hub in one week

Indooroopilly Shopping Centre is now Brisbane’s biggest public electric vehicle charging location with the opening of two new Evie Networks fast chargers on Saturday.

Located in Brisbane’s inner-west, the two 50kW Evie Networks stations join the nine 250kW V3 Tesla Superchargers just eight days after the Tesla-only stalls were activated on September 30.

The Tritium RTM50 fast charging stations run by provider Evie Networks is part of a partnership with AMP Capital, which owns Indooroopilly Shopping Centre, to roll out DC electric car charging infrastructure across 16 shopping centres in Australia and New Zealand. It is also partly funded by the federal government's Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

The Indooroopilly Tesla Supercharger costs $0.69 per kWh on the back of a recent price hike in September, whereas Evie Networks only charges $0.40 per kWh for their 50kW stalls.

Australian Electric Vehicle Association (AEVA) Queensland chairman Jon Day said the Indooroopilly charging hub will most benefit electric car owners living in the city.

“Most of the time DC fast chargers are for long distance travel. But for those people in the inner-city who don’t have residential parking with charging access, they’re probably primarily charging up at Hamilton or Indooroopilly,” Mr Day said.

“I’m happy that Indooroopilly’s taken up the mantle of Toombul as the local charging hub.

“It’s a good location where there’s a lot of opportunity for people to charge at the same time and it seems like a safe environment with toilets and other amenities nearby.

“As we have more EV owners coming online, it’s important that their initial experience with charging isn’t negative – they can go to a charger, have a feeling of safety, and use one that’s working. To have two Evie Networks chargers gives a little redundancy.”

The new public chargers will give some reprieve from the closure of Toombul Shopping Centre which was a casualty of the February flood disaster, although Indooroopilly is 14km away.

At the time, it offered 10 public AC and DC charging stations, including the only two 350kW ultra rapid Chargefox chargers in Queensland as part of the state government’s Queensland Electric Super Highway (QESH) network and six V3 Tesla Superchargers.

It therefore marks the return of Tesla’s faster 250kW V3 Superchargers to the River City.

Evie’s Brisbane-made chargers each offer CCS2 and CHAdeMO charging plugs, while Tesla’s latest stalls have a CCS2 cable only. This means older Tesla Model S and Model X drivers need to use a Tesla Connector to CCS2 adapter to use it.

The American company hasn’t opened up its Superchargers to all EV models in Australia yet.

Tesla Model 3 owner Allan said the Superchargers were difficult to find and park.

“They need to have signage because it was pretty hard to get here,” Allan said.

"When I put it in the navigation, it told me to go into this car park but not really internally where you have to turn. I just fluked it.

"I noticed when reversing in, it's pretty tight. This is a Model 3 and the Model Y would be wider, so it's easy to scrape your wheels.

"My wife also nearly opened the rear door into the next charger, so be aware.

"I just charge at home normally. I'm only coming here because we happen to be coming to Indooroopilly today to look at the BYD Atto 3 and they opened this up… but I just thought I'd charge up since we've got Supercharging referral credits that’ll run out soon."

Indooroopilly Shopping Centre offers three hours of free parking, unlimited parking between 5pm to 4am, and is accessible 24/7.

It is also home to Eagers Automotive’s Automall West that is a fully-fledged car dealership with retail-style showrooms housing brands like Porsche, Cupra and BYD, a servicing floor, and facilitates test drives and delivery handovers of vehicles like the affordable BYD Atto 3 electric car.

While the Indooroopilly site only has two DC chargers open to all battery-electric models, Evie’s Skygate hub in Brisbane Airport features four 50kW DC chargers and the Chargefox QESH location in Hamilton offers two 50kW DC stalls and a 22kW AC unit able to juice up two vehicles at the same time.

Nearby, The University of Queensland replaced its free-of-charge 50kW Tritium charger over the weekend – for the second time – seven months after Saint Lucia was particularly impacted by the February floods.

Evie Networks also installed two 50kW units within Gasworks Plaza, Newstead in August thanks to the AMP Capital alliance and opened two 50kW units in Jindalee in May. But, both have recently been experiencing intermittent faults with the Tritium units.

Previously, only four 150kW Tesla V2 Superchargers in front of its Fortitude Valley showroom covered the Greater Brisbane area.

It’s timely given the boom of the recently launched Tesla Model Y. The company delivered 4359 Model Ys in September, making it the third best selling model overall and ousted its Model 3 sedan twin, supply-constrained Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Polestar 2 year-to-date.