South Africa's CHARGE launches off-grid EV stations on Johannesburg-Durban corridor
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/south-africas-charge-launches-off-grid-ev-stations-johannesburg-durban-corridor-2026-05-19/May 19, 2026 11:03 AM EDT
Summary
- CHARGE launches first off-grid solar EV stations
- Stations are along Johannesburg-Durban corridor
- Firm aims for 60 nationwide sites by end-2027
- EV market momentum grows
JOHANNESBURG, May 19 (Reuters) - South African electric vehicle infrastructure firm Zero Carbon Charge (CHARGE) launched the first of two off-grid, solar-powered charging stations along the key Johannesburg to Durban N3 corridor on Tuesday.
The rollout highlights a growing push to expand charging infrastructure in Africa's most industrialised economy as electric vehicle adoption accelerates, even as grid constraints and energy insecurity pose challenges to large-scale electrification.
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The new stations, positioned on one of the country's busiest freight and passenger routes, are designed to operate entirely off-grid, underscoring a strategy to decouple EV charging from South Africa's constrained electricity system.
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CHARGE plans to expand rapidly from the N3, targeting installation of 60 stations nationwide by the end of next year, before adding further sites to create a denser network.
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https://charge.co.za
Deploying solar-powered electric vehicle charging stations along national road corridors.
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OFF-GRID
Always on power.
Our on-site solar and battery system guarantees enough power needed for ultra-fast charging with the flexibility to scale up as demand increases.
Being totally self-sufficient in power, with on-site energy production, our rates are predictable and controlled and not subject to Eskom tariff hikes or loadshedding.
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= new reply since forum marked as read
...that nuclear fission will not save us.
It certainly might have saved us, or at least ameliorated the disaster now before us, were the trillions of dollars squandered on wind and solar spent instead on mass efficient and resource efficient fission reactors.
I would disagree with anyone claiming to not be Ray Bolger, who at least wished he could have a brain in the "Wizard of Oz," that we "need" several technologies, when one is vastly superior to all others.
All the cute references to solar junk and electric cars in Africa certainly doesn't help the matter along. Despite the obvious failure of we need inferior junk, we still hear these "feel good" reports. In my tenure here, I've been hearing these cute reports about tiny solar "miracles" that can't even support the electricity used to write about them and report them all over the internet.
Fission reactors have the highest capacity utilization of any source of electricity on the planet, generally higher than 90%. Rather than have 1000 wind turbines operating at 25% capacity, with the copper and other elements sitting uselessly for 75% of the time waiting for the wind to blow, or wires connecting networks of solar cells, for the sun to shine, and copper wires to connect all of the redundant system for periods of dunkelflaute, we could have the copper in a nuclear plant's generators serving humanity nearly constantly.
It is however, too late, as is noted, for nuclear fission to do what it might have done. I've actually heard antinukes and "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes here, gloating about their success in attacking nuclear energy with silly diversionary bullshit.
We still hear chanting that we need lots of more stuff.
I'm a scientist, not a wishful thinking marketeer. In science, when a result does not conform with a hypothesis, we throw out the hypothesis, not the result, at least if we have integrity. The result of the hypothetical belief, now bordering on cult thinking, we might be saved of the "combination of several technologies" is squandered money, squandered minerals, and destroyed wilderness for solar and wind are in:
May 18: 431.59 ppm
May 17: 432.02 ppm
May 16: 432.49 ppm
May 15: Unavailable
May 14: 431.82 ppm
Last Updated: May 19, 2026
Recent Daily Average Mauna Loa CO2
I agree with Ray Bolger, the strawman in the Wizard of Oz, but would pluralize it to "If only we had brains.
Unfortunately, we don't and apparently there is no impetus to recognize as much. And so we hear reports through our electricity consuming computers about off-grid copper intensive charging networks for electric cars in Johannesburg and the authors of this mindless cheering resent criticism questioning the importance thereof.
Nothing will save us, but the best thing, invented by the best minds of the 20th century, that might have saved us has been maligned, defunded, even demonized in favor of the reactionary premise that we could do without it by making our energy supplies, and our lives dependent on increasingly destabilized weather. I note there was, is and never will be any interest in the elimination of fossil fuels by the people gloating about this outcome, and still they rail on that we need stuff that clearly doesn't work in any meaningful way.
Around here, people sometimes like to post graphics from the IEA to justify squandering ever more money on solar and wind junk and, um, electric cars, blah, blah, blah...
Here's one:
Minerals used in electric cars compared to conventional cars
A car is a device that operates only for small periods of a day in most cases. If we fuel cars with mineral intensive and land intensive generation systems that operate far less than 50% of the time, we are spitting on mass efficiency, and driving the massive injustice of ripping the shit out of the planet to get to and dig up the world's best ores spent before we die.
Nuclear fission does not need to guarantee that it will "save us" - again the triumph of the antinuke cults have insured it is far too late for that to be possible - to be our best, by far, option. It only needs to be recognized as the best, and only technology that can demonstrate the most "bang for the buck" or "bang for the copper" "bang for land" in saving what is still left to save and still might be saved.
If only we had brains...but clearly we don't.
Have a nice day.
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