Taking your EV on holiday this December? Expect charging queues

If you plan to drive an electric car to the coast this December, budget time for waiting at public fast chargers. Sales of EVs have jumped this year, but the number of fast DC chargers on major routes has barely grown, and drivers already report queues (MyBroadband).

How many more EVs are on the road?

The number of EVs on South African roads since the Nissan Leaf launched in 2014 grew by an estimated 72% in just the first nine months of 2026 (MyBroadband).

Source: MyBroadband, citing NAAMSA and GreenCape figures.

Plug-in hybrids add to the pressure. With fuel prices up sharply in 2026, PHEV owners have more reason to plug in whenever they can (MyBroadband).

Why are chargers not keeping up?

GridCars and Rubicon, the two biggest charge point operators, built networks across 300 to 400 locations early on. Since then, few new fast chargers have been added along holiday routes (MyBroadband).

The biggest addition this year came from CHARGE (Zero Carbon Charge), which opened 12 DC and four AC chargers on the N3, but only at two sites: Roadside and Tugela (MyBroadband). GridCars announced a R40 million upgrade in July 2026, mainly to replace older chargers limited to 500V with faster units, add speeds of up to 120kW at some sites and swap slow AC ports for a second DC connector (MyBroadband). SAEV Charge, the only other major new player, has stations at three Western Cape locations (MyBroadband).

Hilton Musk, head of e-mobility at Rubicon, told MyBroadband that carmakers now bringing EVs into the country in large numbers are not investing in charging networks the way early brands such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar did (MyBroadband).

Are drivers already queueing?

Yes. In a poll in one of South Africa's largest EV owner groups on Facebook, about 57% of members said they expected a big public charging problem soon, and one owner of more than two years told MyBroadband public charging had become "a nightmare" in the past six months (MyBroadband).

Operators have started acting at busy sites:

• Rubicon has put up idling fee warnings at high-traffic sites such as Mall of Africa.
• Chargify has capped sessions at 45 minutes per vehicle at its busy Benmore Gardens Shopping Centre site in Sandton.

Both measures were reported by MyBroadband.

How can you avoid the worst of it?

Book accommodation where you can charge overnight, so you arrive at each stop with less need for a fast charger. MyBroadband suggests this as the safest option for holiday trips given how little the network has grown (MyBroadband).

If you are driving the N3 between Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, CHARGE runs hubs at N3 Roadside and N3 Tugela, plus one at Wolmaransstad on the N12, and lists a 24-hour support line on 0800 777 434 (CHARGE). Check each operator's own app or website for live charger status before you leave, and move your car once it has charged enough, since some sites now charge idle fees or cap session times.