BP In Talks With EV Manufacturers About Charging Station Partnerships

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The oil giant BP is currently in discussions with a number of electric vehicle manufacturers about possible partnerships that would see charging stations installed at some of its fuel/service stations, BP CEO Bob Dudley was quoted as saying in an interview with Reuters.

The reasons for the discussions are pretty obvious ones: the electric vehicle (EV) market is growing and BP wants to get a piece of it.

Interestingly, ChargePoint told CleanTechnica in an interview this week that it saw certain oil & gas companies potentially investing in EV charging infrastructure, in part through gas station networks. Well, BP seems to be one of them.

“We have discussions going on with a lot of the EV manufacturers to have a tie-up with our retail network for charging,” commented Dudley in the interview.

This news follows on Royal Dutch Shell’s recent move to begin installing EV charging stations at some of its service stations in the UK and in the Netherlands.

Reuters provides more: “BP will make investments in future technologies but these will be small percentage stakes in companies or partnering with them, he said. … Dudley said BP was also studying autonomous vehicles and the potential for combining natural gas with solar power generation. … This year is shaping up to be pivotal for BP as it starts up the largest number of new projects in a single year and the huge series of payments made in penalties and compensation for the deadly 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico taper off.”

So, taken together — both the exploration of EV charging station partnerships and a large number of new oil and gas projects — it seems pretty clear that while BP is still of course focused on making money in the ways it historically has, the growth of the EV sector seems to be more and more of inevitability.

Interestingly, and not surprisingly, the BP CEO noted (when asked) that the company wasn’t looking to invest anymore in the US shale oil sector (anytime soon), as it wasn’t able to identify any attractive opportunities there. Watch that space.