Hyundai Australia is pushing for public fast charge providers to be held accountable for broken or underperforming chargers.
Speaking with media in Melbourne, the brand’s chief operating officer described the state of Australia’s public fast charging network as “simply unacceptable“.
“One of the things that we’re encouraging the government to seek and look at is a UK [style] regulation around infrastructure – geographic reach, density, uptime, ease of payment, ease of use,” John Kett told Melbourne media.
Mr Kett acknowledged the challenges faced by the likes of Chargefox and Evie rolling out DC fast electric car chargers, but called for more “accountability” from public providers when things go wrong.
He told media the upcoming fuel efficiency and emissions standards coming from the Federal Government are the perfect time to start the push for regulation.
Hyundai ruled out, however, the idea of taking ownership of the recharging experience with a Tesla-style charge network of its own.
“We’re not in the business of maintaining, owning, and running an infrastructure network,” a Hyundai spokesperson told media.
As for the rules recently announced in the UK? They’ll force public charge providers to have their stations functioning 99 per cent of the time, and will mandate all chargers offer real-time data on their status.
The rules also force each individual charger to display a per-kWh charge price to prospective users, without forcing them to sign a contract or download an application.
Fines of up to £10,000 apply for every charger that doesn’t meet the standard.
Australian electric vehicle owners had access to almost 2400 public charging locations as of the start of 2023, offering a total of 4943 individual plugs.
A fraction of those stations feature the most convenient DC ultra-rapid units capable of charging at 100kW or more, however.
There were just 99 ultra-fast stations in Australia at the start of 2023, along with 365 capable of between 24 and 99kW charging.
The remaining 1928 are limited to 24kW or less.
