Electric vehicle (EV) full maintenance lease business Everlectric has opened shop in Cape Town.

Businesses can lease commercial EVs from the company, which will also provide the charging infrastructure and software support required to ensure the work horses do not run out of juice.

Everlectric co-founder Wesley van der Walt says the EV-as-a-service company, which has its roots in Pretoria, decided to expand to the Western Cape in support of its customer base.

Client companies include UPD, Nightwing Couriers, DSV, FedEx and Woolworths.

At this point, Everlectric largely supplies its clients with the smaller Maxus panel van – the eDeliver3 – from Chinese manufacturer SAIC Motor.

“This is our bread-and-butter product,” notes Van der Walt. “The typical, real-life range on an eDeliver3 before it needs recharging is 250 km.”

As the evolution of EVs continue, however, larger commercial EVs, like 4 t or 8 t vehicles, are also becoming increasingly attractive, he adds.

Everlectric’s business owners are also the official Maxus commercial vehicle distributor in South Africa.

Everlectric currently manages a fleet of 200 vehicles nationwide, with about 40 of these operating in Cape Town.

Van der Walt says Durban will most likely be the next expansion node for the company, which opened its doors in 2020.

“Companies typically start with us with one vehicle, investigating whether EVs make sense,” he notes.

“Now we find that they are coming back to electrify the rest of their fleet.”

A number of Maxus panel vans in the Everlectric fleet have already traveled more than 150 000 km, “with no problems at all”, says Van der Walt.

“We expect them to go to at least 400 000 km.”

But what happens once the vehicles in the Everlectric fleet hit that 400 000 km mark?

“We expect the usable range to decrease to perhaps 200 km,” says Van der Walt.

“We can then look for uses for EVs with this range, or we can deploy the batteries as storage, or we can recycle the batteries.”

Van der Walt says Everlectric’s goal is to have a vehicle parc of about 1 000 by 2030.