EV enabler says Aussie EVs at tipping point

Finnish EV technology pioneer Virta has entered the Australian electric car charging marketplace – and its chief business officer and co-founder, Elias Pöyry, believes it’s arrived at exactly the right time.

Indeed, the EV infrastructure and technology company says Australian electric vehicle sales have reached “a tipping point” and anticipates that EV acceptance and infrastructure are set to scale – fast.

Virta provides the digital backbone for electric car charging systems, working with infrastructure providers and charger hardware companies to build easily-accessed charging networks.

It is currently in over 30 countries, with its Australian debut one of three in the Asia-Pacific region.

This week, Virta announced its local partnership with Australian company Tetris Energy and fellow Finnish DC ultra-fast charging equipment manufacturer Kempower.

Other partnerships are close to formal confirmation too, Pöyry told carsales.

“People ask, why Australia?” Pöyry explained to carsales.

“Out of the 20 countries that sell most cars [globally], Australia is in position 13, so the market potentially is there. Then the second corner of our kind of [business] triangle is what’s the number of EVs and what’s the policy?

“Here, the number of EVs is growing and it has reached the tipping point where it’s really starting to grow.

“And the third corner ... [is] the ease and the cost of accessing the market. [Australia] is English-speaking. It’s normal western country. So, for us, this is pretty much obvious why we are here.”

Pöyry described Australia’s relationship with EVs as in “the nurturing phase”.

“But like with all the children, they grow up much faster than we would think.  And that’s [been] the situation in other markets,” he said.

“When we started [Virta] in Finland, we had 50 electric cars – five-zero. So, I knew basically [the names of] all the drivers. And since then, in eight years, we are now in the situation of 200,000 cars. 

“It took eight years because, when we started, there were no market-ready cars, there were no market-ready chargers, there were no technological [providers], there was no legislation…

“Now, this already exists, which means that the new markets that open, open faster and faster with more and more advanced technologies.

“Now maybe in Europe, we missed the biggest boom … when all the big players were choosing their technology platforms. And we’re not going to miss it [here in Australia and Asia],” Pöyry explained.

Virta’s business model is a mix of subscriptions from charger network operators and a margin on the electricity used by customers.

“We are the enabler,” Pöyry said. “We are like Intel Inside … So, our model is to enable local players – operators and the charging networks. We try step-by-step to digitalise all the possible details there are in the process, to make it as cost-efficient as possible.”

Pöyry said the local environment is attractive to Virta – not just because of the growing sales numbers.

“Why now? It seems that now there is investment readiness, some incentives … And if something, we know for sure, is that the market doesn’t start if there are not enough public chargers,” he said.

Pöyry said Australia is nonetheless well positioned to scale with renewable energy production also growing strongly.

But he stressed the importance of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) as a grid stabilisation method Down Under.

Pöyry confirmed Virta and its partners are V2G ready with CCS hardware. To date, V2G has largely been limited to vehicles using CHAdeMO charging hardware.

“Australia has 30 per cent of solar already, and that is increasing all the time. So, I believe two things – first of all, even if Australia wouldn’t be CO2 neutral, electricity [production] will be much sooner,” he said.

“[But] they need the flexibility on the usage side, which increases the need for battery storages – where EVs are the obvious partner for it.”

For everything you auto know about EVs, listen to carsales' Watts Under the Bonnet: the electric car podcast

Join the conversation at 

our Facebook page

Or email us at 

editor@carsales.com.au