Gary Buck's story
Gary Buck is the Chairman of his Owner Corporation (OC) of The Botanica in Melbourne’s St Kilda Rd. Gary talked to AEVA about the journey his OC went on to install EV Charging.
Gary lives in an older building in the midst of many new apartment towers. “We have plenty of charm”, he said, “but owners still want to have many of the modern features of those nearby buildings”. That included being “EV ready”.
Gary’s building has about 60 apartments over eight levels, and over 100 car bays over two basement levels. The car bays are on the owners’ titles. There are no spare or visitor bays.
In 2022 the OC had not had any requests for EV charging but “we wanted to be ahead of any demand, knowing that early adopters may have strong views on their preferred solution”. So the OC surveyed owners and renters in the building.
The result? About 20% of respondents expected to have an EV within two years and 50% said that they would never buy one. The main concerns expressed were around who pays and possible fire risks.
After talking to a few organisations, the OC engaged Jetcharge to prepare an options paper. It also initiated conversations with the building’s insurer and a number of real estate agents.
Gary told us: “the conversation with the insurer was our first surprise – they said that if we had a robust, Australian Standards compliant system installed by a licenced electrician, our fire risk would decrease. After picking myself up off the floor and chatting further, we talked about the risks”.
The insurer’s view was that if the building lacked an EV charging system, the owners of new EVs may not simply charge elsewhere. They may do risky things like running extension cables, overloading power boards and hiding the evidence if they can.
Having said that, the insurer did not offer to reduce the insurance premium if an EV charging system was introduced.
The feedback from the estate agent was also illuminating. This part of Melbourne has many premium apartment complexes, and the agent said that EV charging is now a very common request. They said that they had seen some sales fall over due to lack of EV charging.
Meanwhile, Jetcharge came back with indicative figures for three options:
- instal one charger
- instal chargers in about 30 bays
- instal a charger in every parking bay.
For financial reasons, the OC chose the middle option. Under this option the OC would provide:
- cabling past every bay on both car park levels
- equipment that provided electrical protection to the building circuits
- the ability to bill the charging costs back to individual EV owners via Chargefox.
Individual owners would need to pay for their own charger (from an OC-approved list) and their connection to the building core (the last mile). The cost for that last item would be about $3500 which was judged to be acceptable.
The end result was something that was very saleable to the OC and to the building’s EV owners. For the OC:
- there was a one-time cost of about $600 per apartment
- the user would pay for their tail circuit, charger and ongoing consumption
- the insurance company was supportive
- the apartments would become more attractive, either for sale or for rent.
For the EV owners:
- there would be a one-time cost of about $3500, plus a monthly charge of around $12 to cover the back billing
- charging would be at modest rates with the option of off peak rates
- chargers would be provided by a familiar service (Chargefox)
- it would be feasible for chargers to be shared between adjacent car bays.
Gary reports that “three years later, we have had less take up than we expected but there has been no negative feedback”.
Editor’s note
Gary shared his experience with us following this presentation by Peter Campbell at the AEVA National Conference on 13 November 2025. Those interested in the important issue of EV charging in strata properties may also wish to check out this submission by the ACT Branch of AEVA to the ACT Legislative Assembly inquiry into the management of strata properties. The AEVA ACT Committee is also discussing the establishment of a register of local ‘EV-Friendly Strata’ sites. The Register could include: Name of site, location, contact, and description of the charging facility.