US President Joe Biden praises Australian electric car charging producer Tritium

A Brisbane-based Australian organization is charging onto the world stage, invited to the White House by US President Joe Biden. EV fast charger producer Tritium is presently electrifying highways across North America and everything began in a Brisbane garage.

In a much-needed lift for US President Joe Biden, Brisbane-based firm Tritium will set up a new production plant in Tennessee within months, making up to 30,000 electric-vehicle fast chargers a year and making an estimated 500 jobs.

A main Australian electric vehicle charging manufacturer has gone to the US to grow its operations, faulting an absence of government incentives for Australia having one of the worst electric vehicle takes-up in the world.

CEO Jane Hunter, who showed up close by Biden as he made the declaration at the White House today, told that venturing into the US was a direct result of the President’s electric vehicle policies, which had brought about “a massive uptick in our demand in North America”.

“It would be an understatement to say this has been a very exciting month for Tritium,” CEO Jane Hunter told.

The Aussie organization, solving an old issue in new tech – how long it requires to charge an electric vehicle. Their ultra-fast chargers can add 350km range in only 10 minutes.

All from humble beginnings

Like Google and Apple, Tritium was established in a garage in Saint Lucia by three Brisbane blokes – David Finn, Paul Sernia, and James Kennedy, who began in solar racing.

“It’s a huge success story if you think about these three young engineers who met solar racing at the University of Queensland,” Hunter said, “They got into electric vehicle charging before it was even a thing.”

Two decades on, Tritium was listed on the NASDAQ last month and today, their newest customer is the President of the United States.

The US Government saved $7.5 billion for a network of 500,000 EV chargers along US highways.

“Wherever you live, charging an electric vehicle will be quick and easy and the foundation will help American automakers set the pace for electric vehicles,” Joe Biden said.

Tritium going where the demand is, declaring a new factory in Tennessee.

While demand keeps on skyrocketing overseas, the organization says it will keep on designing, engineering, and making chargers in Brisbane, saying this is just an expansion – one Australian purchaser will profit from.

“These are high-end products that are based on batteries, lithium, and the rare metals Australia has so this is an area where we can grab hold and take a leadership position on it,” Hunter said.

Tritium’s decision to grow in the US comes after Biden set an aggressive target for half the vehicles sold in the United States to be electric or plug-in hybrids by 2030.

Notwithstanding, to achieve this goal, the White House doesn’t simply need more Americans to change from gas-guzzling vehicles – it additionally requires a network of a huge number of charging stations.

Up to this point, Tritium’s biggest factory was in Brisbane, making around 5000 units every year. However, after the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed Congress, saving $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging stations, moving to the US was a no-brainer since it quickly prompted a change in the organization’s revenue mix, Hunter said.

Toward the beginning of last year, 70% of the organization’s revenue came from Europe and just 20% came from the US, with the excess 10% from the Asia Pacific. In any case, before last year’s over after the bill had passed, 43% of the organization’s revenue mix was coming from North America, 43% Europe, and 14 percent from the Asia Pacific.

“President Biden’s transport electrification policies have contributed to enormous demand for Tritium’s products here in the US – and that directly led us to pivot and change our global manufacturing strategy,” Hunter said earlier during the announcement at the White House.

The present declaration was painted as a win for the US President who has made revamping American assembling a central plan of his economic agenda, including pushing for billions of dollars of public and private investments in the electric vehicle industry.

As well as wanting half of all vehicles on the road to be zero-emission vehicles by 2030, Biden’s plan likewise includes building a highway network of 500,000 charging stations across the US and changing over an estimated 600,000 of its government fleet to alternative fuels.

Figures from the Environment America Research and Policy Centre show that more than 300,000 plug-in vehicles were sold in 2019, up from virtually none just a decade earlier.

However, as indicated by the Alternative Fuels Data Centre, there are around 46,000 publicly available charging stations across the US and industry specialists have previously estimated there would be no less than five to 10 times that rate for the President to accomplish his targets.

Regardless, Hunter said she believed Biden’s goals could be accomplished. Like Australia, she said, North America had “vast amounts of space in the middle” in spots, for example, the midwest, Arizona, Texas, and Nebraska, which were appropriate to trucks rather than vehicles and sports vehicles.

Yet, there was very little price disparity between electric vehicles and internal combustion vehicles, she said, which implied that switching was somewhat simple.

“And then you have $7.5 billion to deal with the infrastructure roll-out,” she said. “I do think (Biden’s goal) is realistic and achievable.”