• New platform devoted to hiring electric cars 
• Expensive models can be used for long periods 
• Evee raising cash to expand its service globally 

An Australian car-sharing platform allows users to hire top of the range luxury electric vehicles and take them for an extended spin.

Evee matches people wanting short-term use of an electric car with vehicle owners who charge them a fee, which the company takes a 35 per cent cut.

Using the service, a premium Tesla Model S, which retails for above $117,000 can be hired for as little as $200 a day.

Owners, labelled as ‘hosts’, may also deliver the car for an extra fee and offer advice on how to drive it.

Evee founder and CEO Slava Kozlovskii told the The Australian that his aim was to allow people to experience electric vehicles.

‘Often they don’t know whether it’s right for them, or don’t know which car is perfectly suited to them,’ he said.

‘They love asking lots of questions and our host owners are happy to answer them. 

‘If you go to Tesla, you’re only given a 20-minute test drive and that never gives you a full understanding of how great these vehicles are.

‘Nothing beats taking that baby out for a whole weekend, and really experiencing the joys of owning an electric car.’

According to Mr Kozlovskii, EV owners can earn around $2,000 per month from the platform. 

Mr Kozlovskii, who was living in the ACT, lauched Evee in 2016 by originally allowing customers to hire a Tesla to drive from Canberra to Sydney.

From this humble start the start-up has clocked up more than three million kilometres of electric vehicle (EV) driving by 8000 customers and is looking to expand internationally.

It is raising money on crowd-sourcing platform Birchal and has attracted interest from cashed-up billionaire investors involved with other Australian tech success stories such as graphic design platform Canva and team collaboration software maker Atlassian.

At the time of writing, Evee had seen 323 investors commit almost $900,000 with 14 hours remaining to reach its 1.6million target.

For now, Evee operates only out of the major state capitals. 

EV ownership in Australia has doubled between 2021 and 2022, according to Mr Kozlovskii.

‘The car rental market in Australia is worth $2bn annually with electric vehicles being the fastest growing niche,’ he said.

‘Through the trust we have built we are able to capitalise on every step of a customer’s EV journey.’

Australian governments have set ambitious targets to boost the number of electric vehicles on the road. 

The ACT has adopted a sales target of 80 per cent electric vehicle sales by 2030, while Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and NSW aim to achieve a 50 per cent share of the market by then.