Royal Dutch Shell will install ultra fast chargers on roads in Europe in partnership with car makers, a media report said.
Citing a statement from the energy company, Reuters said the agreement with IONITY, the joint venture between BMW, Daimler, Ford and Volkswagen, would initially bring high powered docks to 80 highway sites in 2019.
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Others are already building networks but Shell claimed IONITY technology was key to addressing the problem of journey distances.
Reuters said Shell’s most aggressive projections predict the global electric vehicle fleet to grow from about 1% today to 10% by 2025, displacing oil demand of about 800,000 barrels per day.
The number of electric vehicle charging points in Europe nearly tripled from 2014 to 2017 to reach almost 120,000, the report said, citing the European Alternative Fuels Observatory.
With the IONITY technology, cars with advanced charging capacity of up to 350kW will take as little as five to eight minutes to charge, Shell claimed.
“Customers want to go on long journeys in their electric vehicles and feel confident that there are reliable, comfortable and convenient places to charge them quickly,” Shell’s head of retail Istvan Kapitany told Reuters.
The 80 charging stations would be in Belgium, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.
With an additional 20 stations expected to be added in Germany, about a quarter of Shell’s stations along highways in Europe would offer high power electric charging within two years, Kapitany told Reuters.
Shell would invest in changing power supplies to its stations to meet growing demand, he added, declining to disclose the size of the investment or terms of the IONITY deal.
BMW, Daimler, Ford and the Volkswagen Group earlier this month announced the IONITY JV to develop and install a high power charging (HPC) network for electric vehicles across Europe. The plan will see around 400 stations ready by 2020.
The automakers said the network would make long distance journeys easier and was an important step for electric vehicles.
Reuters noted Shell had recently bought Dutch based NewMotion, owner of one of Europe’s largest charging networks.
