EV Charging Routes in South Africa

Country EV landscape

South Africa’s EV charging infrastructure remains extremely sparse, with only five total stations recorded across the country, a figure that underscores a nascent market. Cape Town and George each host a single station, while Pietermaritzburg, Rustenburg, and Klerksdorp report zero stations, indicating that even major urban and secondary cities lack basic coverage. The dominant hot climate may reduce battery range in some models but does little to offset the severe lack of charging density; a driver in Cape Town would have no public charging options for hundreds of kilometres beyond that single point. No dominant charging network such as Ionity or Electrify America is established here, and the estimated EV count of zero suggests that private and public charging deployment has not yet begun in earnest. For a country with 15 cities and 79 routes in the dataset, the station-to-city ratio of 0.33 stations per city is among the lowest globally, making long-distance travel by EV effectively impossible without home or workplace charging. Without a rapid expansion of networks, South Africa’s charging landscape will remain a barrier to adoption, particularly in the hot interior where grid reliability and cooling loads further challenge feasibility.