It took 13 years to shift its first 10,000, but just nine months to sell its second.

It’s been an export success story, too, with around 70% of sales offshore, primarily to Australia.

Together, Evnex chargers have now delivered more than 75 GWh (gigawatt hours) of electricity to New Zealand and Australian EVs, it says.

That’s enough to power around 450 million kilometres of driving, or almost 600 return trips to the moon and back, displacing more than 30 million litres of petrol and saving around 80,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.

Staff numbers have jumped by a third to 48 this year.

And Harvey’s company has just doubled its footprint by taking over the lease on the building across the street.

Is it risky to expand on the demand fuelled by the Iran conflict, which, if longer than the White House anticipated, will ultimately be transitory?

Harvey says there’s been a change in mindset, which he sees enduring. EVs and chargers are no longer the preserve of liberal greenies.

“There’s been a shift from environmental factors to the economic,” Harvey says.

Talk of possible petrol rationing earlier this year focused people’s minds about the immediate threat to their wallets, but also what’s likely to happen with future conflicts and instability, he says.

“People are sick of being beholden to high fuel prices.”

“People have also started to talk about energy security, which has never really been in the discussion before.

“We’re pretty confident there’s been a structural shift in consumer sentiment,” he says. “There will be a return to a baseline, but it will be a much higher baseline than February.”

The electrification of everything

Harvey also sees his firm benefiting from the shift to electrification of not just cars but every appliance and gadget in a home.

Ginger group Rewiring Aotearoa has been influential, moving the conversation beyond a greenie niche. Its chief executive Mike Casey worked with Regulation Minister on cutting red tape for plug-in solar panels, for example (Evnex smart chargers can use surplus solar power).

There’s also an industry trend toward “vehicle-to-home” and “vehicle-to-grid” technology, where an EV can be charged when power prices are cheap, then the EV’s battery used to power home appliances, or even sell power back to the grid, during peak times. This bidirectional technology also means your EV – or “the power station in your driveway” – can be used to keep the lights on during a power cut.

The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) is running an EVs-powering-homes trial in Queenstown, while Genesis has one in Auckland.

Harvey notes it’s very early days for these technologies – trial participants have had to get special exemptions, because today plugging your EV into your home will invalidate the warranty for the car’s battery (which accounts for around a third of its worth). Evnex doesn’t want to invest too early. But in the medium to long term, it will open huge new opportunities for smart chargers.

Power industry partnerships are also on the table. Evnex ran a trial in Auckland with lines company Vector for “intelligent load management” – or managing the load so smart chargers aren’t all charging at once (an issue that will loom larger and larger as EVs grow to an estimated 50% of NZ’s vehicle fleet by 2035).

Today, Evnex chargers have plenty of tricks, from scheduling charges to off-peak times to prioritising excess surplus solar power to plugging into industry data so, for example, a dashboard on its smartphone app lets you know how much of the time your EV’s being charged with renewable energy, and when it’s being topped up by coal-fired power.

“Home electrification has got more and more complex since people started installing batteries and solar, and now they’re trying to get it to work well with electric vehicles. And so we’re really focusing on trying to make sure that the charger works nicely with everything else in the home, to you know essentially use more affordable energy when it’s cheaper and cleaner to generate,” Harvey says.

Faster charging

Beyond the off-peak and load-balancing charging smarts, Evnex’s kit also charges an EV much faster than a regular wall socket, which can take a full day to trickle charge an electric vehicle. The firm’s 7.4kW charger gives a vehicle 50km of range per hour, its 22kW charger delivers about 120km of driving range per charging hour (the exact range depends on the make and model of EV and driving conditions).

Costs vary according to your home power set up and electricity plan but Harvey says data drawn from Evnex network of almost 10,000 chargers across New Zealand — shows that charging an EV at home costs about $380 a year, or roughly $7.30 a week, or little more than a cup of coffee, versus around $2744 annually for a petrol car.

Landing partnerships

Evnex’s future sales should also be buoyed by an expanding list of partners.

In July, Toyota New Zealand and its luxury brand, Lexus, named Evnex as its official partner and supplier of smart home EV chargers.

The auto giant has been the market leader in hybrids. This year it’s doubled its range of plug-in hybrid and battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) with the launch of the Hilux BEV (a fully-electric ute) and the bZ4X, a fully-electric SUV.

“When looking closely at Evnex, a local company based in Christchurch, we saw a strong alignment with our customer-first approach,” Toyota NZ chief executive Tatsuya Ishikawa says.

“Evnex ticks a lot of boxes for us as they have a nationwide installation network, which matches our nationwide store coverage, local manufacturing, proven customer experience, sustainability credentials and, most importantly, a future technology roadmap.”

Choosing a local manufacturer was important for Toyota New Zealand as it meant their customers could have confidence their home EV charger was built for New Zealand conditions and supported by Evnex’s Christchurch-based team seven days a week, Ishikawa says.

Evnex has also had a partnership with Z Energy since 2023.

While Z has public chargers, the partnership centres on the Z-owned power retailer, Flick Electric, which bundles smart chargers on interest-free, two-year terms as part of its Z EV at Home plan.

Why manufacture locally?

Evnex designs all of its products and software, and assembles all of its hardware, in Christchurch, sourcing all components – including the cardboard packaging – from local suppliers. Its charges include injection moulding by Whanganui’s Axiam and printed circuit boards made in Marton.

Part of the approach is simply local pride and love for Christchurch. Harvey, who graduated from Canterbury University with an electrical engineering degree (converting his old Honda to electric along the way), has spent his whole career in the city and has no plans to leave.

But there are also pragmatic reasons for local manufacturing.

Harvey says it allows for a more nimble operation and closer control. Another key factor is security of supply. Harvey first encountered supply chain disruption during Covid and the phenomenon has persisted through until today through conflicts, tariffs and other elements of geopolitical instability.

“We’re able to manufacture really cost-effectively here in Christchurch,” Harvey says.

“We’ve got a very efficient operation. It was demonstrated recently with a fuel crisis that we were able to increase our manufacturing scale very quickly – because we manage a lot of our supply chain ourselves.”

“And customers love it. They love buying a New Zealand-made product.”

Harvey stresses it’s not all about patriotism. Smart software features, one of the slimmest designs on the market and entry-level products competitively priced against Chinese imports are part of the package.

A charger that could pay for itself

Evnex has an increasing focus on software.

“The Evnex app now tells our Australian customers what power plan they should be on, how much they will save, and how to switch. The best part is it’s not just some database of tariffs, it’s a personalised recommendation based on your home’s actual energy usage and charging behaviour,” Harvey says.

“Some drivers are already saving hundreds a year. A few have saved thousands.

“We build EV chargers, but that’s only part of it. If the software can put real money back in your pocket, we reckon that’s worth building too.”

The same feature is coming to this side of the Tasman.

Legislation that will enable a similar feature in New Zealand passed earlier this year, but with an extended implementation period. Harvey says it will be six to 12 months before his firm gets access to the data.

Can New Zealand play catch-up?

“We spend roughly $12 billion a year on imported fuels, and that’s a massive drag on the economy,” Harvey says.

“We’d like to see the government recognise that and support or accelerate the transition to electrification.”

He sees Australia as currently ahead on measures to encourage EV sales.

In New Zealand, EV sales boomed from mid-2022 to the end of 2024 as the Clean Car Discount of up to $8625 was dangled to entice EV buyers. But they crashed in 2025 as that carrot was taken away, replaced by a stick as $76 per 1000km road user chargers were imposed on electric vehicles (or, at least, EVs lost their longstanding exception from RUCs).

Australia has no RUCs for EVs and various state-level incentives. Harvey says its key incentive is EVs’ exemption from fringe benefits tax. He’d like to see EVs exempt from FBT here, too.

The Clean Car Discount was criticised in some quarters as a tax break for the rich. Analysis by Herald data journalist Chris Knox found that Auckland’s wealthiest suburb, Remuera, also had the highest concentration of EV owners.

Harvey argues that an FBT exemption would encourage wider adoption of EVs for company fleets, which have a high turnover – often selling vehicles after just a couple of years. More EVs sold by fleets would help seed the second-hand market.

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The Evnex founder does give the current Government credit for its Investment Boost scheme (which allows a business to claim an additional 20% of the cost of an asset or improvement to property as an expense, then claim depreciation as usual on the remaining 80%).

His company’s website also has links to low and no-interest loans offered by various banks for EV, charger and solar buyers.

The Government has chipped in $66m toward a public-private drive to expand the public charger network to 10,000 points by 2030, but Harvey points out most charging takes place outside this subsidised environment.

A survey of 500 owners for the EECA, taken over April and May last year, found 90% of EV owners and 93% of plug-in hybrid owners charge privately, at home or work.

One-in-three sales electric or plug-in hybrid

Regardless of Government policy, EV sales have boomed this year – equalling then passing the Clean Car Discount peak.

In July, for example, Transport NZ figures show registrations of new vehicles were almost flat at 11,663 (just 25 more than July 2025)

In the passenger vehicle segment, battery electric vehicles accounted for 22.3% of sales and plug-in hybrids for 14.4%, giving the two technologies a combined share of 36.7% in July.

Year-to-date, battery electric and plug-in hybrid passenger vehicles represented 28.5% of new registrations, more than double the 12.8% share at this point last year.

With EV makers and dealing with sellouts and some buyers waiting months for vehicles bought earlier this year, the boom is set to continue. BYD, for example, says it brought a record 2750 electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles into the country.

The squeeze on the Strait of Hormuz remains a key factor, but the market was already rebounding thanks to a wave of Chinese EVs that are close to or even match petrol car pricing.

For Harvey, it’s all topping up his smart charger funnel.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.