CEO Danusia Wypych (pronounced Dah-nu-sha Vih-pik) started at ChargeNet in November last year. Danusia sat down with AA Directions to talk about the future of EVs, her vision for the company and her giant teenagers.
Tell us a bit about yourself.
I’m a long-term Wellingtonian. I grew up in Tawa, went to school in Porirua and have lived and worked in Wellington for most of my professional career. I also love infrastructure and energy which is not everyone’s go, but it’s mine.
How has working for ChargeNet changed your outlook on EVs?
I think until I went into the application process for ChargeNet, I hadn’t realised how far up the ramp of exponential growth we were. I had looked at EVs when I was at Z Energy over a decade ago and back then I had described it as a spider graph of doom. Everything was uncertain – price, battery, charging times. Would they even make EVs? That was uncertain. Ten-13 years ago there was nothing you could actually build a business around.
Coming back into the sector, I’m seeing how much has changed. There are 75,000 EVs in New Zealand now and at ChargeNet we’ve got 1.4 million charging sessions under our belt as a company. It took us seven years to get that first million and we reckon we’ll get that second million this year. So that lift in utilisation and adoption is really heartening to see.
ChargeNet CEO Danusia Wypych. Photo by Nicola Edmonds.
Do you drive an EV yourself?
I do! We’d been putting off buying our next car, but we got it last year. We’d been debating whether we should go from one car to no car – but I did not have support from the family to be a no-car household. So, we got rid of our 15-year-old Toyota and we went for a Tesla Y. That for us was a practicality choice; I’ve got three extremely tall teenage sons – 6’8”, 6’5” and 6’1” and my husband is 6’8” – so getting us all in a car is a challenge on the best of days!
You say you were putting off buying an EV – why was that?
Our car still worked; we didn’t use it very much as we live in Wellington, where you rarely have to travel far, and we use public transport a lot. My first EV was my electric bike which really changed my life because it meant I could commute more often to work, so I was riding to work four out of five days a week for three or four years.
What does the future for the EV charging network look like?
There have been 10 gigawatt hours delivered in the public charging sector this year. By 2035, if we take the climate commission adoption rates, that could be 690 gigawatt hours. So, there’s going to be a huge increase in demand for public charging, which is what we focus on. There’s also going to be a huge increase in private charging. We expect 85% of the time, maybe a little bit more, people will charge at home because that makes so much sense; I charge at home.
We’re already seeing other companies entering the market which we’re excited about – one company cannot continue to support an entire nation’s EV adoption alone.
At ChargeNet we’ve built the first end-to-end network in New Zealand, and we’ve done that with private capital and some support from EECA (the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority), but we really need other companies to participate in the market and create different types of charging, so you can charge if you’re at the supermarket, at the gym, or at a park-and-ride. Those sorts of charging opportunities and styles need to be introduced.
Can you give us any insight into how charging technology is changing?
Battery size has made a huge leap forward, so therefore your range has also taken a huge step forward. In the next 10 years there will be a balance between total range needed, recharge time and how much battery you want to put into a car, so the price point of EVs is going to come down. It’s been predicted that EVs will reach the same price point as a internal combustion engine vehicles in the middle of this decade.
Overseas, in markets that have a higher level of adoption, EVs can be part of what they call ‘virtual power plants’, which means having your car participate in supplying electricity to your local network. For New Zealand, that’s still a long way off; at the back end of the next 10 years. It’s exciting to think that EVs could provide electricity when it’s needed and only take it when it’s cheap.
ChargeNet CEO Danusia Wypych. Photo by Nicola Edmonds.
How do you see New Zealand’s transport sector changing in the next decade?
Commercial fleets are shifting to EVs now. So, within two years many of these ex-commercial EVs will be turning up in the driveways and carparks of ordinary New Zealanders. Right now, nearly half of all Kiwis are considering buying an EV for their next car and this means that within the next decade over a million cars on New Zealand roads will be EVs. We'll be using EV trucks in our cities; we'll share our cars more and drive them only when it makes sense, because other public transport modes will be more mature. It's going to be a decade of transport improvements.
What are your ambitions for ChargeNet?
We’re going to be busy! Our plan in the next three years is to expand our network (which has almost 300 charge points across New Zealand) adding another 300 points. We talk about our ‘chapter one’ story as our network story – making the end-to-end drive through New Zealand possible. ‘Chapter two’ is about strength and density; we want to tackle the challenges people are seeing because of more users. We want to provide more than one charge point at a location. We’re going the spend as much money in the next three years as we have in the last seven to improve that infrastructure.
Story by Matthew Tso, photos by Nicola Edmonds for the Winter 2023 issue of AA Directions magazine.
Explore more from AA Directions magazine while you're here:
- World champion boxer Mea Motu shares her favourite things about living in New Zealand
- Meet 19-year-old Breanna Morris, a New Zealand champion race car driver
- Spend a long weekend exploring the beauty and tranquility of Aotea Great Barrier Island
