It will take about five years for electric vehicles (EV) to take a significant share of the Australian car market, according to listed petrol station operator Viva Energy, which says it is focusing on making sure EV owners have a decent while-they-wait shopping option first.
CEO Scott Wyatt says the company plans to invest in EV chargers “in parallel” with improvements to its retail arms at petrol station sites. .
EVs currently make up about 0.9 per cent of the total car pool in Australia, but rapid growth means they’re quickly outpacing the number of fast chargers available, according to data from Ampol.
Viva Energy dipped its toes into the EV charging pool last year, when it promised 30 charging hubs for Shell-branded petrol stations in New South Wales (NSW) would be rolled out over several years.
It says some 26 will be operational by early 2025, but the goal is to deliver the full 30, according to a Viva Energy spokesperson.
The project comes with $14.7 million in funding from the NSW government. It did not rate a mention during the official section of the results call.
“We’ve been working on our EV solution for a little while and [are] now able to move forward with the rollout of that with the support from the New South Wales government,” Wyatt said, in response to a question from The Driven.
He said the company needs to have a “compelling retail offer” for customers given the amount of time EV charging takes.
Currently, Viva Energy hosts 14 charge points for Evie Networks and it has six charge points inherited through the newly acquired OTR brand, a spokesperson told The Driven.
“If you include all charge points in our service station network, we will have around 50 charge points operational by early 2025,” he said
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