The ACT has cancelled a contract with an electric vehicle charger operator that relies on advertising due to concerns over "visual clutter".
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Jolt, which had been selected along with two other operators to deliver the first stages of the charger network, was on Tuesday told it would not be part of the government-funded rollout.
Officials in the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate made the decision because they believed the operator's reliance on digital advertising in high-traffic areas did not meet community expectations in Canberra.
Geoffrey Rutledge, a deputy director-general within the directorate, said the government was still on track to deliver 50 chargers by the end of 2023, a commitment in the parliamentary agreement struck by Labor and the Greens.
The government in August 2022 had announced the three providers, which included Jolt, Evie Networks and Engie, would deliver 77 chargers by the end of 2023, at a cost of $1.4 million.
Mr Rutledge said Jolt had got through the first part of the procurement process because officials believed the advertising involved would be acceptable. All operators are expected to have signs on their charging stations.
"We were looking for innovative business models and they came with an innovative business model, which is they offer free charging to the consumer, but they do display digital advertising at the time," he said.
"We thought that would probably be OK."
The more detailed development application process revealed the digital display advertising required would be "a bridge too far", he said.
"When we looked at them in closer detail after the announcement, I think we appreciated that their level of their scale and level of digital advertising, probably brought a visual clutter that we weren't expecting," he said.
Advertising signs on public unleased land are banned in the ACT, unless approved by the director-general of the Transport Canberra and City Services Directorate, who must find the signs do not "cause undue disturbance, inconvenience or offence".
The National Capital Plan also bans commercial roadside signs except on bus shelters.
Mr Rutledge conceded the government could have spent more time thinking the procurement process through, including providing more detail on charger locations to potential operators.
"We're going to take a different approach in the second [procurement] where we're going to try and spend more time on site analysis and really micro-level site specification rather than the than the the heat map and letting industry do it," he said.
"We awarded the contract and we announced the contract and only then did the providers really pursue land tenure, access to the grid, all of those kinds of things and - and they are creating some delays to the delivery."
Mr Rutledge said there was likely to be a negotiation between Jolt and the ACT government on the cost of ending the contract.
"They certainly have done some prep work. I imagine Jolt will be disappointed that we're not proceeding with that government support. I imagine there'll be a negotiated outcome but we haven't got there yet," he said.
Mr Rutledge said public charging infrastructure will form a key part of supporting people who live in attached and high-density housing to access electric vehicles, while people with private garages will largely charge from home.
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The government will on Wednesday release an updated district-level map of expected charger locations.
Mr Rutledge said electric vehicle charger operators were not yet making money and expected government subsidies but would become more profitable over the next three years.
"I think there's more players out there now than there will be in five years' time. I reckon there'll be a shakedown in the industry but because it's emerging, you get, you know, different players with different models right now," he said.
More than 500 publicly accessible electric vehicle charging stations will need to be installed across Canberra before the end of the decade to support the take-up of zero-emission cars, an internal ACT government assessment found late last year.
The majority of adult Canberrans are interested in buying an electric vehicle when they next replace their car, but high prices remain the most significant barrier, a study commissioned for the ACT in 2020 found.
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