The $7 billion petrol station and fuel giant Ampol is trialling electric vehicle charging stations at six of its outlets, but the company says it’s not a signal it expects demand for petrol to start diminishing soon.
The company has installed the first of the charging stations at a service station at Avenel, 115 kilometres north of Melbourne, in partnership with Evie Networks, and plans another five as it tests demand.
Ampol, which was known as Caltex until a name change last month, is separately rebranding all of its 2000 service stations to Ampol over the next 24 months.
Alan Stuart-Grant, executive general manager of strategy and corporate development at Ampol, said on Friday that it was likely that other fuel sources such as hydrogen would also be incorporated into the future offerings to customers.
He said it was difficult to forecast future demand for other fuel sources besides petrol, and there was no fixed timetable for when Ampol might decide to expand the rollout of electric vehicle charging stations.
“There’s not a fixed horizon. I think this is the beginning of something,” Mr Stuart-Grant said.
Ampol wasn’t expecting a drop in demand in the use of fuels for traditional combustion engines, although the growth rates were likely to slow.
The next locations for an Evie charger are Taree in NSW in June, Dandenong in outer Melbourne in August, Werribee just outside Melbourne in October, and Seven Hills in Sydney in October. Macksville in northern NSW will follow in 2021.
Eliminating ‘range anxiety’
Ampol has 800 company-owned service stations and there are 2000 in the network when franchise outlets are included. Mr Stuart-Grant said Ampol’s service stations were generally in busy locations on main roads, and having a larger ”backbone” of stations was an important element in starting to eliminate ”range anxiety” for electric vehicle drivers.
That is the name given to the syndrome where some owners are always nervous about whether their vehicle will have enough power to make it to the next charging station.
Electric vehicle pioneer Tesla, led by chief executive Elon Musk, is working on the so-called “million mile” battery designed to deliver better range for future Tesla vehicles.
Tesla shares earlier this week jumped above $US1000 ($1455) a share after Musk told his staff it was time to bring the Tesla Semi commercial truck to “volume production”.
Ampol changed its name in May from Caltex after shareholders gave the green light. In April the company temporarily eluded the clutches of Alimentation Couche-Tard after the Canadian convenience store operator walked away from its $8.8 billion takeover proposal.
Couche-Tard pulled its bid because of the heightened uncertainty in the global economy stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.
Experts say Australia needs to comprehensively step up the installation of fast-charging stations to prepare for more electric vehicles. An analysis by consultancy firm EY released in mid-May found that between $6 billion and $30 billion in investment would be needed.
State governments, including Queensland and NSW, have started providing charging stations for the almost 7000 electric vehicles in Australia
But Australia remains a laggard in the uptake of electric vehicles, which made up only 0.7 per cent of new car sales last year.
Evie Networks chief executive Chris Mills said the Avenel site would have two bays for electric vehicle owners who could charge their vehicles in around 15 minutes.
Extracted from AFR