Royal Dutch Shell has announced that it is buying New Motion, which runs one of the largest electric vehicle charging networks in Europe. The purchase marks the multi-national oil and gas company’s first deal in electric mobility, Reuters reports.
New Motion will operate in parallel to Shell’s programme of rolling out fast charging points at its own stations by providing charging facilities at the workplace and homes, and Shell said it had no plans to integrate both. Currently, Shell is installing electric vehicle charging points at retail stations in the Netherlands as well as Britain, Norway and the Philippines.
Dutch-based New Motion was founded in 2009 and currently has more than 100,000 registered charge card users on the Continent. It manages over 30,000 EV charging points in Western Europe and also offers access to another 50,000 partner locations.
Closer to home, it is the technical partner for GreenTech Malaysia’s ChargEV network – in 2015, GreenTech had announced plans to partner New Motion to develop Malaysia into a local manufacturing hub for charging hardware, related subindustries and components.
The move towards electric mobility solutions is in anticipation of a significant increase anticipated in the field – Shell expects around a quarter of the world’s car fleet to be electric by 2040, and estimates have it that around one to three million public charging points could be needed in Western Europe by 2030. At present, there are fewer than 100,000.
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I can smell something fishy here. Don’t trust oil company.
Hopefully there would be more research on battery-tech.
An oil company buying an electric charging network company? Sounds very fishy indeed. Hope it’s not an modus operandi to kill the electric charging network.
Your doubts and conspiracy thoughts are laughable. SHELL and many oil majors are calling or referring to themselves as an ENERGY company. Energy can be produced from any source (wind, solar, oil, gas, nuclear, fission) and supplied as any form (electricity, gas, liquid). The writing on the wall for oil and gas is as clear as sunlight. If these energy companies don’t innovate and stay ahead, they’ll end up like Nokia.