Electric cars-Volkswagen and BP could strengthen their partnership on charging stations | Photo credits: © Volkswagen AG
DÜSSELDORF, April 28 (Reuters) – Volkswagen and BP are planning to strengthen their partnership in electric vehicle charging and may expand into new regions and technologies, executives of the two groups said on Thursday.
The automaker and oil company plan to jointly install 8,000 fast-charging points across Europe by 2024 for battery-powered vehicles, in a deal that will see BP install VW-produced mobile chargers in its network of service stations.
The fast mobile chargers will have a capacity of around 150 kilowatts (kW), a significant charge for a range of around 160 kilometers in just over 10 minutes.
“There are so many other areas where we complement each other,” Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess told reporters at a ceremony in Düsseldorf, unveiling the first electric vehicle charging stations to come out of this process. partnership.
“BP has a very strong network in many places around the world. So that means what we do here can also be done elsewhere,” continued Herbert Diess, adding that BP could also be a partner in the field of charging electric trucks.
The network will be open to other brands, said BP chief executive Bernard Looney. Tesla’s supercharger network, which has begun to open up to competition, is still restricted to Tesla drivers in many markets.
“Five hundred and fifty million people live less than 20 minutes from a BP site,” said Bernard Looney, asserting that his group had the necessary capacities to densify this network of electric chargers. (Report Christoph Steitz, French version Augustin Turpin)