Shell may be the place to go for refueling your petrol and charging EVS as well
As part of its energy transition strategy, energy giant Shell plans to shed some of its retail locations, including gasoline stations, to focus more on EV charging sites. The closures will shrink the company’s retail footprint by 2.1 percent. In 2023, the company operated 47,000 locations.
Shell said it will need to find additional locations or expand the size of its current locations in order to boost its charging business. The company said it would spend more on public charging because it believes public charging will be “needed most by our customers.”
Moreover, Shell said it will be focusing its efforts more in China and Europe, where the EV market is more developed and demand is high for public EV charging stations. The brand says it aims to increase the number of charge points it has from the 54,000 it operates today to 200,000 by 2030.
Currently, Shell’s EV chargers are located at its filling stations, on-street locations, and at “mobility hubs” as well as other sites, including supermarkets. In the US, the company said its Volta charging acquisition completed in 2023 gave it one of the largest charging networks in the country.
According to Shell’s Recharge EV charging map, the company operates just over 3,700 charging stations in the US with multiple charging plugs at each location. By comparison, Tesla offers around 6,000 charging stations with over 15,000 DC fast-charging plugs and several thousand more Level 2 chargers.
On top of that, in the US, there are also pockets of opportunity in the charging business. For example, Blink Charging CEO Brendan Jones told Yahoo Finance on Monday that narratives of slowing EV demand within auto markets are countered by the fact that Blink is “still seeing growth across the [charging] segment.”
Additionally, he also mentioned that the “fleet segment is on fire,” and that apartment buildings and broad-base infrastructure projects adopting EV charging are “growing the fastest.”
Shell in turn believes owning and operating physical sites, despite a closure of some sites over the next two years, gives the company a competitive advantage and boosts profit projections.
Nathan Niese, associate director of electrification and climate change for Boston Consulting Group, believes retail operators like Shell may have the right strategy for charging.
We got all this from Yahoo Finance and their full article is linked here. Thank you Yahoo Finance for the information and images.
