Australian maker of battery integrated EV chargers hopes to succeed where Tritium failed

An emerging Australian battery storage and EV charging company has installed the first of its battery-integrated EV chargers, and expects to roll out many more amid the dramatic shake-up in the industry following the failure of two big players.

The Brisbane-based eLumina was only founded 12 months ago, and is poised to launch its own domestic manufacturing facilities shortly as it rolls out a suite of community-scale battery storage options, and its EV charging products.

Co-founder Lisa Marsh says the company began as an EV charging idea. 

“I did some consulting around 2020 to a battery manufacturing company in China and it was me exploring Australia as a potential investment opportunity for them to bring this technology here,” Marsh tells The Driven.

“At the time we had very few electric vehicles on the road and they weren’t too keen on doing such a big investment here, so it was put on the backburner.”

Marsh drilled down into why there were so few EVs in the country and decided that a lack of chargers, and a lack of chargers in rural and remote areas that could cope with Australia environmental and infrastructure conditions in particular, was a problem that could be solved.

That led to a 193kWh battery-integrated-charger called the D1, which reduces pressure from EV charging on the grid, as well as the D2 fast charger, and a mobile DC charger that is still waiting to be launched.

Currently four D1 chargers have been installed, in Parkwood and Gunabul Homestead in Queensland, and more recently two in Mittagong, New South Wales, where it has replaced NRMA’s battery-backed Freewire chargers.

Another 30 have been ordered by NRMA and Essential Energy.

“In the next 12 months we will install at least 50 D1s and probably about 150 D2s,” Marsh says.

“It looks like we’re about to get an order for 120 D2s.”

eLumina is lining up a big deal in Western Australia, and this week said it has joined the Chargefox network, although its chargers are all tap and pay enabled – so no app is required.

Can a newcomer survive where Tritium and co have not?

Australia’s first EV charging supplier, Tritium, collapsed this year and US-based Freewire pulled the plug weeks later – leaving NRMA needing to rip out battery-backed fast chargers supplied by the company that had just been installed.

So it would be fair for consumers to ask whether another company, with just a 12 month track record, can survive Australia’s clearly very harsh commercial environment.

Marsh says the company is being approached to put the D2 charger in at former Tritium stations.

“Our products are chalk and cheese with Tritium. Tritium didn’t have an all-in-one battery solution so their target market was very different, their price point was also very different. Our D1 product, the recommended retail price is $250,000. It’s really designed for rural areas and we’re the only ones solving that solution,” Marsh says.

“To be fair to Tritium, when they started out there were a lot less electric vehicles on the road. They forged a path for all of us and we all get the benefit from the findings from their journey.

“We get to go on Plugshare and these sites and listen to what the community is saying about different sites around the country, and we’ve only been able to do that because of Tritium’s pathway. There’s learnings we’ve now been able to adopt to make sure we don’t make the same errors.”