Energy Dispensed On Rubicon’s Charging Network In South Africa Up 142% In 2025 To 625MWh

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Charging infrastructure has been growing nicely in South Africa. According to Rubicon’s annual report for 2025, by mid-2025, there were over 500 public stations operational in South Africa from all the various charge point operators. This growth helped maintain a favorable EV-to-charger ratio of 1:7, better than the global 1:10 benchmark. The report adds that this growth has primarily been driven by private initiatives. Some examples are Zero Carbon Charge launching off-grid solar-powered stations, including in rural areas like Wolmaransstad, while BYD announced plans for 200-300 megawatt-level chargers by end-2026, with initial rollouts in 2025. Eskom piloted 10 stations at five sites and procured 20 EVs for its fleet, aiming for full electrification by 2040.

Rubicon is one of the major players in South Africa’s electric mobility ecosystem. Rubicon’s network is currently composed of 103 public charging stations, and 20 charging stations at the various OEM partner dealerships. Rubicon now has a total installed capacity of 6,648kW (public ones making up 5,632kW, and chargers at car dealerships making up 1,016kW). Rubicon says another 77 (11 DC + 66 AC) stations are to be added by the end of FY2027. Rubicon says its charging network handled 21,606 transactions in 2025, up 159% from 8,338 in 2024. This corresponded to 625MWh of energy dispensed in 2025, up from 258MWh in 2024. This 625MWh of energy dispensed in 2025 is equivalent to 3,125,000km (or 78 times around the globe) of electric travel.

Rubicon adds that some of the highlights of the year included:

• Launch of credit card payments and installed first 30 terminals
• Launch of Fleet Charge Cards and on-boarded first fleet customers
• Appointed as Geely charge partner
• Appointed as Jameel Motors (Changan/Deepal) charge partner(cards & chargers)
• Appointed as Stellantis charge partner(cards & chargers)
• Appointed as Jaguar/Land Rover charge partner
• Preferred charge partner to DongFeng(E Auto Motors)
• Selected as preferred charging provider for Hyprop Properties
• Enabled electric travel in and through the Eastern Cape with AIDC project

Some interesting insights on customer charging behavior are as follows:

• Customers spent a total of 1,054,986 minutes or 17,583 hours charging on Rubicon’s network.
• Most charging takes place at DC chargers –19,961 DC sessions vs 1,785 AC sessions.
• DC charging at malls is the leading preference for EV drivers, followed by DC charging at fuel stations and then DC charging at dealerships.
• The most popular times of the day to charge are between 10h00 –13h00 (I found this to be an interesting time to be a favorite of many to charge).
• Average charge duration was 70.74 minutes.
• The average energy dispensed per charge session was 21.58kWh.

You can tell that range anxiety is still an issue that is on many people’s minds in South Africa from last year’s vehicle sales performance. Plug-in hybrids are the hottest thing in South Africa right now in terms of sales growth. Sales of plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) were up 280% in 2025 compared with sales figures from 2024. In total, 738 PHEVs were sold in 2024 and 2,808 PHEVs were sold in 2025 in the passenger vehicle segment in South Africa. The overall new vehicle sales market was up 16%, as 596,818 units were sold in South Africa in 2025. That means PHEVs had a market share of just 0.47%.

Over the past couple of years, plugless traditional hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) had been more popular on the South African market, with very little action on the PHEV side of things, but a shift seems to be starting now, with HEV sales down 6% in 2025. 13,552 HEVs were sold in South Africa in 2024, compared with 12,751 HEVs sold in 2025. BEVs, on the other hand, did not have a great year in South Africa. Only 1,018 passenger battery-electric vehicles were sold in South Africa last year, down 17% from 1,231 in 2024. So it seems more people are going for the “safer option” with the insurance of an ICE engine as backup for driving range, hence PHEV sales are growing faster than BEV sales.

The good news is more plug-in vehicle options are now available in South Africa. 2025 saw the rise of Chinese OEMs, enhancing affordability to a certain extent. Some of the models included models from BYD like the Dolphin Surf (under R400,000), Shark PHEV and Sealion 5, 6, & 7, while Chery introduced the Tiggo7 & 9 PHEV, Omoda C7 and C9SHS PHEV and Jaecoo S7SHS. Stellantis introduced the LeapmotorC10 SUV, the Alfa Romeo Junior, and Jameel Motors introduced the Changan Hunter REEV and Deepal SO7. Geely, BYD’s largest rival, also launched in South Africa in 2025 with the E5 BEV and E5 EM-i (PHEV), while DongFeng entered the market with the Box and 007. The Volvo (XC90) and the BMWiX1 and iX3 also entered the market in 2025. Over 12 sub-R1 million EVs were available by year-end, and six new in 2025, which gives consumers more options in this price range. 

2026 promises more models as Toyota confirmed three BEVs for early 2026, while Jetour, Geely, BMW, and Volvo have all confirmed several expansions to their current lineup. New brands such as Denza, iCaur, Lepas Zeekr, Riddara, and Farizon have also been confirmed for launch in 2026 by the mother companies (BYD, Geely, & Chery).  I hope with this news of growing charging infrastructure from the likes of Rubicon and its  peers, more South Africans will make the switch to electric. Ryan Jarret takes BEVs on exciting road trips across South Africa and showcases that it is now quite easy to go on all the popular cross country routes in electric vehicles. More awareness programs are needed to educate consumers and build confidence in the market to help accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles in South Africa.

Image courtesy of Rubicon