Petroleum Company BP says that fast charging stations tend to be more profitable than selling gasoline for cars.

Charging electric vehicles for the past few years has remained a losing business for both BP and its competitors, while costly investments have been made to expand the system. This situation is expected to reverse, although it is unlikely before 2025. However, with BP’s existing platform of fast charging stations that can refill batteries in just minutes, charging stations are reaching a level of profit close to selling fuel.

Rising demand for fast battery charging in the UK and Europe has helped change everything. BP representative did not disclose how much of a loss or profit would be from charging electric vehicles or when the profits of it could outstrip sales of traditional fuels. Though, BP’s 2020 report shows that the gross profit margin of the petroleum retail industry is $3.5 billion. In the first nine months of 2021, net profit was $2.6 billion, about 17% of the company’s total profit.

The company also said that sales of electricity to charge cars in the third quarter of 2021 increased by 45% compared to the same period in 2020.

According to energy consulting firm Thunder Said Energy, the profit of the conventional fuel retail at gas stations is about 17 cents per gallon, or about 0.4 cents per kWh.

BP – a company based in London – plans to develop electric vehicle charging in the coming years, growing from the existing 11,000 charging points to reach 70,000 charging points by the end of 2030.

Competitors including Royal Dutch Sell (also based in London) sell fuel and have chains of convenience stores, achieve high profits and focus mainly on energy shifting strategies.

Shell has achieved the goal of having 500,000 charging points worldwide by the end of 2025. On January 13, the company opened its first super-fast electric vehicle charging station in London, which can charge 80% of a car battery pack in just 10 minutes.

While competitors like Shell mainly invest in a range of charging technologies including tens of thousands of low-power charging points on streets in the UK and elsewhere, BP focuses on fast and super fast charging technology.

However, fast charging (with a capacity of more than 50 kW) and super fast charging (more than 150 kW) are expensive to install and require a great investment in large capacity grid infrastructure.

Source : VnExpress