Stellantis launched a Charging & Energy business unit on Tuesday to make it easier to keep electric vehicles on the road and cash in on an expanding range of services around greener mobility.
Reuters said the unit would offer a platform called Free2move Charge providing customer services including access to over 500,000 charging points in Europe “through partners” by the end of this year. The company said a still insufficient charging network across the industry created ‘charging anxiety’ for all drivers of electric vehicles (EVs).
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Stellantis reportedly reiterated it was still evaluating Tesla’s charging standard after rivals including Ford and General Motors (GM.N) signed deals to adopt it in North America.
Stellantis plans for 100% of its European passenger car sales and 50% of its US passenger car and light duty truck sales to be battery EVs by 2030, Reuters noted.
The group sees business opportunities from operating charging stations, Stamatti said.
“The margin on energy (used for charging points) itself is fairly rich,” he said.
“But ultimately charging is going to be more than energy, it’s going to be about what people do while charging (…), think of advertising, retail, media consumption”.
Reuters said the Free2move Charge “ecosystem” would offer other services for private customers of Stellantis brands including support for home charging facility installation, and for businesses.
It would also allow access to a network of public charging points “through partners” in North America, Europe, and other regions to be announced later, Stellantis said.
Investments would be significant while key partners would include energy companies, retailers, hardware manufacturers and utilities, the report added. More details would be provided over the course of 2023, including for the business unit’s financial targets.
