Easing companies' transition to EVs: Meet the CEO of SA's first commercial electric vehicle leasing business

With South Africa still relatively slow on the uptake of electric vehicles, there's one company that's taken the lead in providing EVs as a service.

Everlectric is the first South African business to package leading electric vehicles, charging infrastructure and finance solutions that remove the hurdles to adopting a cleaner and more efficient future.

Stephen Grootes chats to Ndia Magadagela, the co-founder and CEO of our first commercial electric vehicle leasing business.

It was during her accounting science studies at the University of Pretoria that Magadagela met business partner Paul Plummer, and during her articles at DeLoitte that they became friends with partner number three, Wesley van der Walt.

While their career paths post-articles diverged, the trio would still meet regularly for coffee.

At one point, they discussed starting a business together one day, without knowing what it would be yet.

It was whenthe subject of the worldwide shift to electric mobility came up, that she says 'our eyes popped and we decided to start looking at this idea and what it would look like for SA'.

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Everlectric was established in 2020 and a proof of concept started in 2022. In 2023, the company went commercial, starting with 40 panel vans.

It has since seen more than 100% growth year-on-year in demand for its vehicles and counts big names like Woolworths and FedEx amongst its client companies.

Essentially what they've done is to set up a business model to take the headache out of the transition to EVs for logistics clients, Magadagela says.

"If they want to go from internal combustion engines to electric there are a lot of questions they ask themselves. Firstly, is the question of the higher cost of the vehicle, then 'where am I going to charge?' and then questions like 'how am I going to make sure the charger I'm going to has power?'."

Everlectric takes care of all of that so that a company can still do their business without an interruption, she says.

Charging infrastructure is provided at the client's premises, and Everlectric has eyes on all its vehicles whether they're being charged overnight or are on the road.

"We ensure that overnight those vehicles are charging, and if they are not, we will either start the charging remotely or we'll call someone and say a particular vehicle has not been connected... That is our headache to take care of and not the client's."

When a vehicle is on the road, and they see for instance that the next charging station is too far away, they would then alert the driver and send them to another provider's charger, she explains.

Magadagela's entrepreneurial bent was likely sparked by her parents - a health inspector and a nurse at the time when they decided to start their own retail business in a village in Venda.

"Our formative years for us five children was manning the till or delivering foodstuffs in the village in the early 90s. You see firsthand what it means, like working on Christmas Day because it was the busiest time... but it taught us about work and building something."

With South Africa transitioning to democracy, her parents were looking out for their kids in the sense of the kind of new opportunities that had not available to them during the apartheid era.

Being sent to boarding school at the age of 12 also taught her about independence and helped her develop her social skills, Magadagela says.

She believes her dad, who passed away during her articles years would have supported her move away from a comfortable corporate job to the risks of business.

"Yes, I was having a great time as a chartered accountant going into senior management.... but I think if you've got this 'entrepreneurship bone' in you there will always be something that's niggling - that says you should be doing something else."

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