QuickCharge wants to make you an energy baron
A new company says its chargers can pay for themselves in eight months by letting you sell power to EV drivers.
Singapore
DRIVING an electric car means saying goodbye to buying fuel, but could it also mean saying hello to selling energy? QuickCharge is hoping to turn individuals, commercial property owners and condominium managers into Charging Point Operators (CPOs), who make money by selling electricity to drivers.
"Anyone can be a CPO, as long as they have the space," says Morgan Lim, a sales consultant at the company. "We do all the work, including the installation of the charger itself and running the back-end for collecting payment. We even promote your charging point on our app."
The company says its Charge and Earn scheme uses chargers that can pay for themselves in as little as eight months. This assumes that electric vehicle (EV) drivers use the customer's AC charger for five hours a day, and pay S$0.55 per kWh for the privilege, which is comparable to what electricity costs on other public charging networks.
QuickCharge estimates that buying and installing an Aurora 7, its AC charger, would cost around S$2,600. It lets owners set pricing, and drivers can either pay with a contactless point-of-sale device, or through a smartphone app.
Owners can expect to make S$3.40 in gross profit for every hour an EV driver uses its AC charger. If they manage the charger through the QuickCharge smartphone app they pay a S$50 monthly membership fee, and share 30 per cent of their revenue to pay for maintenance of the software.
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QuickCharge is also marketing a range of faster DC chargers, and says its 30kW model, the Venus 30, occupies a sweet spot in the market. At S$14,990, it costs less than half as much as a 50kW charger, but can still recharge a Tesla Model 3 from 10 to 90 per cent of its battery capacity in around an hour-and-a-half. Installing it would allow a CPO to serve several different EV drivers a day, making it ideal for, say, shopping malls, the airport carpark or a restaurant's parking lot.
It has even more powerful chargers for fleet operators, and is working on importing a 350kW charger, which can recharge electric buses.
The company, whose website went live on Thursday, still has a few details to iron out. Its charger supplier is working on obtaining a Letter of No Objection, which charging point owners need before they can let members of the public use their hardware. QuickCharge is also working on the app that will allow both EV drivers and CPOs to interact with its chargers. After those pieces fall into place, it hopes to launch its Charge and Earn service in the third quarter of this year.
In the meantime, QuickCharge is also eyeing the private residential market. Its launch price for the Aurora 7 is S$1,680, making it one of the cheapest AC chargers on the market. "People want to charge their EVs. That doesn't mean they themselves have to be overcharged," says Ms Lim.
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