Shell has now doubled its initial announced plan to build 100 fast charging stations for electric vehicles in Germany. The new plan is to add 200 such stations, as well as increase the number of hydrogen filling stations in the country from the 80 it has promised thus far.
The EV fast chargers will be positioned in existing Shell filling stations, mainly in the north of Germany, around Hamburg and Berlin. These ultra-fast chargers will have an output of 175 kW, and they will be installed by a Hamburg-based company called Adler Smart Solutions.
This is just part of Shell’s claimed commitment to shift some of its attention towards “new energies,” an initiative it’s investing up to $3-billion per year into. Mind you, this is less than 1 percent of the company’s annual revenue, so it clearly doesn’t want to stop selling you oil-based fuels any time soon.
Shell isn’t the only oil company that has been investing in EV-related infrastructure, although others have been a bit more cautious. BP invested $5-million into FreeWire, a manufacturer of electric vehicle charging solutions, and is looking to buy up EV charging networks in Europe, while Chevron invested in ChargePoint and Total followed in Shell’s footsteps by announcing plans to build 300 charging stations on the Old Continent.
