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Oil companies buying up EV charging networks: Shell acquires Ubitricity
- TechnoTimeStop 6y agoI just don't see how any network can even compete with https://na.chargepoint.com/charge_point https://na.chargepoint.com/charge_point Are we saturated yet? Demand forecast? https://www.plugshare.com/ https://www.plugshare.com/ There seems to be a rather large number of charging stations in America already...
- Analemma_ 6y agoWe're not even close to saturated. On the contrary, we're so far from being saturated that I'm having trouble taking this comment seriously. To take an example, just a couple days ago the Verge published their review of the Mustang Mach-E [0]; the bottom line was that the car is great but the chargers are impossible to find. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/22265570/mustang-mach-e-review-electric-ford-ev-photos-video https://www.theverge.com/22265570/mustang-mach-e-review-elec...
- hedora 6y agoI wish they’d focus on making a truck (or maybe an explorer, or even a.. mustang). It’s their core competency, and Tesla already cornered the SUV and sedan market. Also, trucks are gas guzzlers, so replacing one with and EV is comparable to replacing 2-3 sedans or compact SUVs. This release makes me think they’re too risk adverse to start with flagship models, and don’t really think this car will be read for the mass market. (Mustangs are their best selling car in California; F-150’s and Explorers are one and two across their whole market.)
- gabereiser 6y agoAnd soon they will be owned by oil companies. That’s the point. These large oil companies have so much money they just will buy the companies that run the networks. Throw a dart at any station on chargepoint.com and it could be owned by big oil.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoDoes that matter? My objection to big oil, such as it is, is the carbon emission/fossil fuel stuff. I don't have a problem with the corporate structures inherently.
- cortesoft 6y agoUnless the artificially keep prices high so as to keep gasoline as a cheaper fuel.
- dmt0 6y agoUnless they artificially keep prices high. Full stop. It's not about gasoline, it's about control over energy in any form, concentrated in a small number of hands.
- nindalf 6y agoLot harder to concentrate when solar power is inherently distributed.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoThey've not managed to do that with gas. I expect that solar will be much the same.
- xiphias2 6y agoGood luck buying up Tesla.
- gabereiser 6y agoThere’s plenty of other charging station companies they could buy and corner Tesla.
- freeone3000 6y agoCompared to the number of gas stations, this is still rather low. Since you actually have a lot less throughput at a charge point versus a gasoline vendor, we'll actually need more charging stations than gas pumps.
- moocow01 6y agoI'd guess actually we'll need significantly less charging stations than gas stations at full electric conversion being that you can fill up at home and its most desirable to do so time and cost wise. I have an electric car and use a charging station about once every 3 months when on a long trip.
- cortesoft 6y agoExcept most people charge at home, and most driving is local. You only need charging stations when traveling long distance.
- sithadmin 6y agoDepends on the locale. Plenty of us city folks don't have a 'home' for our cars to charge in. Our cars live their whole lives on the road. And quite a few suburb-dwellers seem to park their vehicles on the streets as well.
- moocow01 6y agoThe thing is as adoption increases there will be less charging stations and just spots with EV charging whether its in a home, apartment or street parking. I think the idea of a station where you go to fill up with electricity or gas will become obsolete - it'll be ubiquitous as anywhere can effectively be a gas station for very little investment comparatively.
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- dokem 6y agoThere are regularly same chain gas stations on the same corner because people don't search for a station, they use one that doesn't require an extra left turn. I don't ever see an EV station and live in a large city. I think that map gives a false impression of density.
- drfuchs 6y agoEasy to compete with ChargePoint. Most of them are in expensive garages, and charge more on top of the parking fee (and more than gas would cost for the same mileage, to boot). And frequently they’re out of order, or in use, or the guy on the other side steals the cable while you’re charging. And it’s slow, but you’d better be back when charging is complete, or you’ll be charged an extra penalty. - A Dissatisfied Customer
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoSaw this coming. I see the end goal as making EVs as expensive to drive as ICE powered vehicles. I can't see electricity prices coming down ever, and as EV penetration increases there will be plenty of ostensible, or actual, reason to charge (ha!) a premium for EV charging, especially if you're not fortunate enough to own a home and require either on-street or a benevolent landlord who will likely charge (ha!) a premium for charger installation / continued access.
- ddmma 6y agoCould Shell rebrand to Plug, problem solved. Interesting how our views are molded by media and news, some years ago there were wars in middle east to balance petrol prices. Sure it’s about controling the market
- jedberg 6y agoThis in and of itself is not concerning. It makes sense for them to diversify into other forms of energy used for transportation. What we need to keep a close watch on is what it does to prices. Will they use their position to artificially inflate the price of electricity? Or shut down existing charge points to limit supply? Hopefully this is just them diversifying to get ahead of declining revenue of their main product, and not something more nefarious.
- moocow01 6y ago"Will they use their position to artificially inflate the price of electricity" Maybe but they have significantly less power to maneuver with solar, batteries and on-premise charging. All property is potentially a cheap gas station and for those that don't own a home with cheap electricity or solar, I'd guess that the market would respond with some form of airbnb for charging if prices at charging stations got too out of whack. Shell doesn't have the ability to create the strangle-hold that is possible with gas.
- kevindeasis 6y agoWouldn't creating a bottleneck to significantly increase the supply be more expensive than competitors expanding the supply The only way I see that the competitors being crushed is through IP. But for me that seems a little farfetched But maybe someone smarter can tell me I'm wrong as I'm kinda curious about this.
- ratsmack 6y ago>... and not something more nefarious. Like maybe having a good supply of oil to run diesel generators to supply power for charging stations, maybe?
- raverbashing 6y agoWhy would they need that? Power from the grid is still cheaper than a diesel generator.
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- dzhiurgis 6y agoWhat I don’t get why power companies don’t setup their own stations. Infrastructure seems to be largest cost of such stations and they are in best position to enable it. Heck it could even be billed to your account, especially if you sell your solar excess to network.
- hungryhobo 6y agoMy guess is power companies are more or less monopolies, they might not care enough
- arrosenberg 6y agoI don't know about other parts of the country, but the chargers in my building are operated by the local power utility and gets charged to my power bill. I've lived in other buildings where this isn't the case, but at least in my city the utility is making an effort to do that.
- ozim 6y agoI think they will still get their cut because they provide power to those charging stations without having to invest anything. Why would they spend money when they will get free profit? If you would say they still would have to invest in infrastructure then they won't and they will say "you want better connection to the grid than normal people, pay up $$$".
- mjul 6y agoThey do: in my neighbourhood the two leading providers are E.on (German, EU wide) and Clever (Danish, focusing on the Nordics). They are both expanding rapidly - for example Clever alone is planning to provide fast charging stations for 70% of the projected national demand in 2025, and growing their charging network size by around 6x.
- kevindeasis 6y agoI think what these oil companies realized is that they will cater to two personas of their customers. EV and IC vehicles I think they realized that IC and EV are both not going away soon, so why not keep their customer base instead of other competitors taking them away. Also, they already have the advantage of real estate. They know that they can add a charging network cheaply in their gas stations than a new player in town building one. I don't really buy the argument that they can limit supply to increase the price of driving EV. I recently bought an EV and sold my IC car because it puts a smile on my face when I drive it. It was never a financial decision for me. Plus EV are insanely expensive, most of these people can afford a substantial increase in electricity prices Like geez, you can buy two IC for one EV. I do hope that EV car prices go down significantly as it seems like a lot of people would want to buy an EV, but the price point is just too much
- tlrobinson 6y ago> They know that they can add a charging network cheaply in their gas stations Maybe a dumb question, but is it safe to put a bunch of EV chargers at gas stations? I don’t think I’ve seen any so far.
- grogenaut 6y agoThere is power at gas stations already, there is in fact power at the pumps. They also let you drive your car up to the pump, use your cell phone, and wear clothing that generates static electricity.
- alexgartrell 6y agoI'm not an electrical engineer, but from watching this video [0], there seem to be about a million and a half different mechanisms to prevent sparks from chargers. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMxB7zA-e4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMxB7zA-e4Y
- speedgoose 6y agoMost gas stations in Oslo have fast chargers, between 50 and 300kW each.
- jimmySixDOF 6y agoRIP - Better Place (2007 - 2013) Yet another case study of being right but at the wrong time [0] https://www.fastcompany.com/3028159/a-broken-place-better-place https://www.fastcompany.com/3028159/a-broken-place-better-pl...
- nickik 6y agoWow, I didn't know that story. Their idea wasn't really right, so I'm not sure why you are saying that. In fact, it seems to me their idea was absolutely and totally wrong, now and then. Its not at all what oil companies are doing. Tesla has clearly shown that a charging network doesn't make nearly enough money to subsidies cars. In fact the opposite is true, car sales finance the charging network. Battery swapping, out-side of a single luxury brand in China has also seen very little adoption. So that part of the idea was also wrong. Seem like 'Better Place' was literally getting everything thing possible wrong.
- jimmySixDOF 6y agoWell, with the benefit of hindsight you are correct, however in 2005 things may have looked a bit different to them but I think the bigger point here is that having a $900M budget for charging stations today is a much better fit than it was when they got funded.
- nickik 6y agoHad they actually focused on charging station and not bringing a car to market and battery swapping, they could have had much more success and wouldn't need $900M.
- mikewarot 6y agoStartup idea: Users sell surplus Powerwall charge/charging access via a real time auction site. Airbnb for charging.
- unglaublich 6y agoThis trading market for energy is already a reality for big consumers and is being developed for private consumers as well. Apart from that, you don't have easy control over the necessary infrastructure to facilitate such a private market.
- mikewarot 6y agoIf I had a solar array, a Powerwall, and charger, why couldn't I sell the excess charge in my Powerwall to anyone who wanted to drive over, and get a charge? Why couldn't property owners with big power feeds offer supercharger type services to complement the existing networks? One home isn't something worth of a network, but AirBnB aggregated them into something disruptive. The same could be done for lone charging stations.
- erpellan 6y agoEarly days but it's starting to happen: https://octopus.energy/tesla-energy-plan-faq/ https://octopus.energy/tesla-energy-plan-faq/
- kristopolous 6y agoThey've been rebranding themselves as energy companies for a while. There's nothing sinister, they're just reading the room
- hannob 6y agoShell has branded itself back in the early 00 years that they're basically a solar company now. So have other oil companies ("Beyond Petroleum"). The "but the oil industry is investing in other energy including renewables!" was all a big lie, the numbers never supported that. It'll take more than some token investments to convince people that it's different this time.
- kristopolous 6y agoIt's not a moral pivot. They're still bastards. The economics of fossil fuel energy is becoming increasingly poor with the advancements in alternatives. It's becoming more expensive while electric storage and generation is become cheaper. I'm sure they'll raid their way into the alt-energy market, squeeze out small businesses, do price cartels, try to form monopolies, and do a bunch of other nasty things. But they won't continue to be propping up absolute monarchies and funding international terrorist organizations like they have been. It'll be a different kind of evil - closer to Nestle, Monsanto or Bechtel. Companies become large through aggressively exercising power. Sometimes it's mostly benign, sometimes it's bloody. Electric storage/generation looks like it'll be less bloody than oil.
- nindalf 6y agoIt doesn’t take a genius to see the graphs of cost to produce batteries and solar power plummeting. In 3 years, it’ll cost more to operate existing coal power plants than it will to build a solar plant. If that trend continues for a further 3 years, electricity during the day will be given away nearly for free, making it dirt cheap to own an EV. It’s hard to compete with free for petroleum companies. It’s a bit worse than that for them because lower demand means they might lose certain economies of scale, making it even harder to compete. For example, some gas stations might close down if they lose half their customers, making it even more likely that customers will switch. And of course, after 2030 it’ll be difficult to find anyone selling an ICE car at all. Transportation (land, sea, air) accounts for 60% of all petroleum. And land accounts for 75% of that. So around half of all consumption is going dwindle to 0 over the next 10-15 years. The writing is on the wall for those who care to read it.
- projectileboy 6y agoKeep an eye on these purchases. They may be buying them as part of a strategy to kill EVs.
- cr1895 6y agoThe billions of euros many of these oil majors are throwing behind renewable forms like solar, offshore wind, hydrogen, etc. would suggest that the idea this is a strategy to kill EVs is nonsensical.
- nickik 6y agoThat train has left the station long ago. Killing EV was something feasible 20 years ago. Today the amount of investment and capability of the players involved is on a whole different level. The oil companies couldn't stop Tesla or VW if they tried.
- whazor 6y agoShell is an evil oil company. For example, they knew about climate change in 1986 already and kept it quiet[1]. But now they are pressured by public opinion, court, government, and even shareholders to take action. Their PR propaganda is now to reduce CO2 as much as possible for fossil fuels and to develop alternatives. They are a key player in liquidised natural gas, which produces less CO2. Next they are engineering heavily in hydrogen production, which sucks for cars but will probably be nice for ships. [1] https://thecorrespondent.com/6285/shell-made-a-film-about-climate-change-in-1991-then-neglected-to-heed-its-own-warning/692663565-875331f6 https://thecorrespondent.com/6285/shell-made-a-film-about-cl...
- tryonenow 6y ago>Shell is an evil oil company No one "knew" about climate change in 1986. It took 20+ years of research to gather and analyze enough evidence to prove such an enormous claim, that humans had been inadvertently geoengineering the planet. Also shell employs tens of thousands of people - this myth comes from one internal communication that maybe a dozen eyes at most even saw.
- kolinko 6y agoThe basic science behind climate change is relatively easy - we know co2 keeps infrared radiation, and by 1980s we saw how quickly co2 levels increase in the atmosphere. It’s widely asserted that Exxon knew about what they are doing back in 1970s. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...
- Roritharr 6y agoMy main problem with this argument is that I'm not sure what the alternative should have looked like. Exxon having a "oh fuck" moment where they told their workers to stop working, their customers that there is no product to sell etc. seems something so extremely hard to pull off even if all of upper and middle-management wanted to do the right thing, I can't see how they could have. I always imagine what would happen if the "5G/Radio is bad for you" crowd was proven right by people at Nokia. What would a realistic while morally sound strategy have looked like?
- kolinko 6y agoI hope it won’t end up like tyre companies buying up train companies...
- AntiImperialist 6y agoI hope they're doing it to shut them down.
- rektide 6y agothe post-gas station model- the "charging network"- is lock in beyond what oil companies ever could have dreamt of.
- ehvatum 6y agoI don’t have a gasoline pipeline to my house, but I do have electrical service.
- rektide 6y agothis is a very good point but what about when we have to depend on infrastructure not our own? if you aren't home, what do you do? right now, Tesla is the one company that has a 100.1% proprietary infrastructure answer of their own. gas cars have unlike electric been standard "forever".
- Proven 6y agoIt's hilarious how the busybodies think they're somehow #winning, while Shell and others merely invest into whatever governments are wiling to subsidize with their insane deficit-driven spending.
- jaggs 6y agoEverybody missing the point of this purchase. Ubitricity feeds electricity to cars via existing lamp post sockets. Designed for dense urban areas where street to home connection is a big problem. I've been using the Ubitricity charge point in my street for over a year, it's not speedy at 3 to 5.5kW so I have to hook up for hours , but that doesn't really matter because there are around four charge points with two blocks, so there's usually spare capacity. It's quite frankly brilliant.
- komuW 6y agoGas stations make very little margins selling gas/fuel ~2%. However, their own convenience stores have very good margins. So, a gas station operator would like to keep you at the station for as long as they can in the hope that you'll enter the convenience store. That's partly why they have restrooms, smoking zones(for countries where public smoking is illegal), etc. They are partly their for your own convenience and partly to make you stick around and eventually enter the convenience store. EV charging presents a perfect opportunity to keep you at their station longer. Each charge is probably going to take a minimum of ~30mins; and you'll spend most of it lazing around the convenience store drinking crap coffee marked up at 60%
- nickik 6y agoIts surprising to me oil companies are getting into charging, rather then materials processing. The is a gigantic market emerging for battery materials. All of these high grade materials need processing. Given oil companies should be expert at dealing with extraction and processing, I would expect them to get into that supply chain. There is tons of places where a large investment could lead to huge returns. - Lithium - Nickel - Graphite - Cobolt All of these need significant amount of processing before they go into batteries. I understand oil pumping and refining is different then a nickel mine and refining, but it doesn't seem to be a crazy transition to make. Had they started this a couple years ago they would be in a great position. Promising projects were incredibly cheap to buy up a couple years ago.
- fuzzfactor 6y agoMining is unclean and they already have an operation where the best money is made from oil that comes out of the ground by itself after the well is drilled. Here they are drilling into electricity reserviors and also taking their cut as it makes its way to consumers, with what they think is probably the best technology for the occasion too. Who knows where that electricity is coming from but the math could probably be done and it may turn out this makes Shell just a little bit cleaner.