BP Buys Britain’s Largest Electric Vehicle Charging Company

[LAOIL + 33]

BP Plc plans to acquire the U.K.’s largest electric vehicle charging company, the latest in a string of acquisitions by major oil companies in the growing market for greener transport. This British oil major entered into an agreement to buy Chargemaster, which has more than 6,500 charging points across the U.K., paying about $170 million for the purchase ans staying within the $500 million annual budget for clean energy. 
 

[Sofia + 35]

Is this good news or bad news for EV infrastructure? 

[Vlad Kovalenko + 115]

Definitely an interesting buy. Big oil getting into electric. Someone else seeing that the future of cars is electric.

[BlackTortoise + 103]

Or control of the growing EV competition to protect the still lucrative oil assets? Sorry for being skeptical. 

[Adam Varga + 123]

BP already estimated there will be 12 million EVs on UK roads by 2040 and they all will need access to chargers. It has a network of 1,200 service stations which are retail outlets. That's why they say that a major goal of the deal is to step up the deployment of fast and ultra-fast chargers on UK forecourts. This purchase was a logical move. 

[Guillaume Albasini + 851]

There is a clear trend of european oil companies investing in EV tech and renewable energy (BP, Shell, Total, Equinor). The long term strategy is to convert from oil company to energy company.

American oil companies blinded by their shale dreams are more reluctant to do that. One day they will awake to discover they are part of a sunset industry having missed the EV and renewables trains.