The great electric car switchover: matching infrastructure with demand

Many gov­ern­ments, includ­ing the UK, are reg­u­lat­ing petrol — and diesel-pow­ered cars to the his­to­ry books. The future of mobil­i­ty – whether pri­vate cars, com­mer­cial vehi­cles, fleets or pub­lic trans­port – is chang­ing to low­er car­bon alter­na­tives, includ­ing elec­tric. This tran­si­tion to e‑mobility demands more than just extra charg­ing points. Entire infra­struc­tures need to be cre­at­ed to sup­port sweep­ing changes to the way we move around.

Shell Recharge Solu­tions, pre­vi­ous­ly New­Mo­tion, plans to be part of a holis­tic approach to get­ting more elec­tric vehi­cles (EVs) on the roads. The busi­ness unites New­Mo­tion in Europe and Green­lots in North Amer­i­ca and Asia under one brand iden­ti­ty and com­ple­ments its offer­ing with fast charg­ing via Shell Recharge’s pub­lic net­work.

Melanie Lane, CEO of Shell Recharge Solu­tions Europe, describes the company’s strat­e­gy as “being able to pro­vide the whole ecosys­tem to help busi­ness­es and con­sumers in their tran­si­tion to e‑mobility. Essen­tial­ly, cus­tomers will have access to EV charg­ing on-the-go, at home and at work”. In prac­ti­cal terms, this trans­lates into a glob­al port­fo­lio of charg­ing solu­tions that will help meet the needs of EV dri­vers and busi­ness­es in dif­fer­ent stages of their tran­si­tion to zero-emis­sion trans­port.

“We are aim­ing to oper­ate more than 500,000 charg­ing points world­wide by 2025 and 2.5 mil­lion by 2030 – this is part of our ener­gy tran­si­tion plan,” says Lane, refer­ring to Shell’s expan­sion into the EV charg­ing sec­tor. “Our plan to roll out charg­ing points will be mar­ket- and con­sumer-led. Migrat­ing at scale to EVs requires many things to come togeth­er – noth­ing can hap­pen in iso­la­tion.”

Shell Recharge Solu­tions is focused on offer­ing EV dri­vers what they need for a seam­less EV dri­ving expe­ri­ence. That means an ecosys­tem of charg­ing solu­tions that is afford­able, con­ve­nient and glob­al­ly acces­si­ble.

The demand for charg­ing at home and at the work­place is help­ing Shell Recharge Solu­tions deter­mine its geo­graph­i­cal expan­sion, with the EU at the fore­front.

“It’s a com­bi­na­tion of con­sumer and busi­ness demand, and gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy – the Euro­pean mar­ket is very fast-paced,” says Lane. She explains that, in Asia, the mar­ket poten­tial varies between coun­tries, while in the US, pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s EV roll­out poli­cies are “very encour­ag­ing”.

In the UK, there is incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther enhance the con­ve­nience for the cus­tomer, includ­ing around res­i­den­tial charg­ing points. For exam­ple, the gov­ern­ment has set a tar­get of build­ing 300,000 new hous­es by the mid-2020s with all new homes requir­ing EV charge points to be installed. This, in con­junc­tion with a £20m invest­ment in installing on-street charge points, demon­strates sig­nif­i­cant focus on EV-charg­ing infra­struc­ture. Shell Recharge Solu­tions will be a key provider of prod­ucts and ser­vices as these mea­sures stim­u­late more demand from cus­tomers.

“We plan to work with prop­er­ty devel­op­ers as home charg­ing is a big area for us,” says Lane, adding that home charg­ing is “mul­ti-faceted”, with the com­pa­ny hav­ing plans for instal­la­tions in hous­es and apart­ments.

Shell Recharge Solution’s 2021 EV dri­ver sur­vey found that even though there are now more than 29,000 charg­ing points in the UK, 33.3% of EV dri­vers are unable to install a charg­ing point at their home and a fur­ther 15% have no access to charg­ing at work. Com­bined with the added incon­ve­nience of need­ing mul­ti­ple charge cards and sub­scrip­tions while on the go, the EV user expe­ri­ence can become com­pli­cat­ed. How­ev­er, cus­tomers of Shell Recharge Solu­tions ben­e­fit from a pub­lic roam­ing net­work of more than 275,000 charge points in Europe and 10,000 in the UK – all of which can be accessed via a sin­gle charge card or app.

The sur­vey high­light­ed that lack of infra­struc­ture is a bar­ri­er to more dri­vers replac­ing fos­sil fuel-pow­ered cars with EVs – and it caus­es so-called ‘charge point’ anx­i­ety for exist­ing EV dri­vers. More than half (57%) of UK dri­vers wor­ry about the lack of avail­able charge points in the near future as EVs become more main­stream.

“This is a log­i­cal con­se­quence if dri­vers can­not be sure they will have access to charge points for their entire trip,” says Lane. “That is anoth­er rea­son why it is so impor­tant to match charg­ing infra­struc­ture with demand.”

Infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment is where Lane says Shell Recharge Solu­tions’ plans go beyond sim­ply installing charge points, with the com­pa­ny plan­ning to help busi­ness­es and con­sumers go elec­tric. “We can enable smart infra­struc­ture with hard­ware and soft­ware, offer­ing addi­tion­al ser­vices to con­sumers and busi­ness­es,” she says. “These range from charg­ing insights, the avail­abil­i­ty of the near­est avail­able pub­lic charge point and ener­gy man­age­ment ser­vices that help man­age the increas­ing demand on the grid.

“Shell also has a ser­vice sta­tion fore­court net­work, which is an essen­tial part of com­bat­ing the range anx­i­ety for both pri­vate and pro­fes­sion­al dri­vers. For busi­ness cus­tomers, the chal­lenges in switch­ing to an all-elec­tric fleet need to be addressed. We are work­ing at an indus­try lev­el and a com­pa­ny lev­el to sup­port the ener­gy tran­si­tion in busi­ness­es.”

Logis­tics com­pa­nies, for exam­ple, need to feel reas­sured that they will be able to keep all EVs charged and that mak­ing the tran­si­tion away from com­bus­tion engine vehi­cles won’t affect the bot­tom line.

“In the long term, logis­tics providers will be able to enjoy the ben­e­fits of own­ing EVs because of the low­er total costs of own­er­ship,” says Lane. “They should be wor­ry­ing about their next deliv­ery, not where they’re going to charge their vehi­cle.”

Whether Shell Recharge Solu­tions is cater­ing to pri­vate or busi­ness cus­tomers, Lane believes the hard­ware it pro­vides must “bal­ance afford­abil­i­ty, qual­i­ty and capa­bil­i­ty” to scale up effec­tive­ly. This inno­va­tion-dri­ven approach involves a com­mit­ted research and devel­op­ment team, as well as estab­lish­ing part­ner­ships to improve access to charg­ing infra­struc­ture.

Lane put the time-sen­si­tive nature of the EV roll­out chal­lenge into the con­text of cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion tar­gets. “Unlike the growth of inter­nal com­bus­tion engine car usage, there is a seri­ous urgency to this work – low car­bon trans­port is on top of the agen­da for many and dri­ving a low car­bon future has nev­er been more impor­tant,” she says.

“Clean­er trans­porta­tion is essen­tial to this future, and EV charg­ing infra­struc­ture is as impor­tant as EV adop­tion to mak­ing this change.”

As gov­ern­ments set dead­lines for end­ing the sale of new inter­nal com­bus­tion engine cars, the enor­mi­ty of how trans­port is evolv­ing – and the day-to-day prac­ti­cal­i­ties for dri­vers – can­not be over­stat­ed. A ban on the sale of new cars pow­ered pure­ly by fos­sil fuels comes into effect in 2030 in the UK and 2035 in the EU.

“It is about soci­etal, envi­ron­men­tal and polit­i­cal change — and we are at the nexus of it. This indus­try is evolv­ing dai­ly and it is very excit­ing,” she con­cludes.

Find out more about Shell Recharge Solu­tions and start your EV charg­ing jour­ney at uk.shellrecharge.com/public-charging

Pro­mot­ed by New­Mo­tion