JET Charge Charging as a Service Project

Summary

Need

This business model solves a significant barrier for fleets specifically, by removing inertia-related to the high upfront costs and ongoing complexity of operating charging infrastructure.

Australia’s fleets are relatively small by global standards with over 410,000 businesses each operating under 100 vehicles. Accordingly, most fleet operators lack the scale and sophistication to efficiently procure, deploy, operate and maintain battery electric vehicle (BEV) charging infrastructure. Fleet managers traditionally operate an operational expenditure (opex) business with vehicles leased and fuel costs paid through fuel cards allowing a simple monthly charge back to the fleet operator. In comparison, BEVs require significant upfront capital expenditure and ongoing operation and maintenance as well as the added complexity of at home and on the road charging requirements.

The highly distributed and fragmented nature of fleets and their business, as well as residential premise charging needs, create major inefficiencies for infrastructure funding, deployment and operation.

Action

The Project seeks to demonstrate JET Charge’s ‘Charging as a Service’ (CaaS) business model as a potential solution to the barriers preventing businesses from transitioning their fleets to BEVs, by:  

• Providing an end-to-end solution for customers, allowing the complexity of BEV fleet transition to be managed by businesses with JET Charge’s expertise; and 
• Offering standardised products allowing businesses to generate scale and recurring revenue – all of which are attractive features of a scalable business model to institutional investors seeking to deploy capital into the space.  

JET Charge is seeking to develop and scale the first full-service charging solution in Australia. By establishing this Charging-as-a-Service (CaaS) business model, JET Charge is combining BEV charging hardware, installation, operation, maintenance and asset management into an opex service. CaaS allows fleets to fully outsource their charging needs to JET Charge through a bundled monthly payment.  

JET Charge can aggregate demand from fleets across Australia to achieve the required economies of scale across all parts of the value chain and provide the lowest cost of charging to customers. At scale, the standardised product offering and recurring revenue is expected to attract new institutional investors, driving down the cost of capital in this sector. 

Outcome

Over the Project’s three-year duration JET Charge aims to install 3,160 chargers, mostly at workplaces but with an estimated 800 chargers to be installed at customer’s homes. This target is matched with the uptake of 3,160 passenger and light commercial BEVs by fleet, which represents one BEV for each charger deployed under a CaaS contract. 

The Project aims to overcome the financial and operational barriers to accelerate to BEV uptake and accelerate fleet electrification with a bundled charging infrastructure solution that is comparable in cost to traditional ICE vehicle refuelling. 

The Project has potential to increase skills, capacity, and knowledge relevant to BEV technologies, and improve understanding of the CaaS business model. 

Additional impact

Fleet vehicles comprise 50% of new vehicle sales and approximately 2.5 million passenger and light commercial vehicles in total. With a shorter hold period, typically fleet vehicles are sold on roughly four years after purchase, with the re-sale of these vehicles supporting the second-hand market.  

The growth in BEV sales shows there is increasing interest from business and consumers in electrifying their passenger and light commercial vehicles.  

This Project seeks to break down barriers to rapid BEV adoption, with specific focus on fleets to stimulate the second-hand BEV market.