Thursday 1 August 2019

BP teams up with Chinese firm for EV charging infrastructure

British energy giant BP is joining forces with China’s Didi Chuzing to build charging infrastructure for electric vehicles (EVs) in the East Asian country.

They are forming a joint venture to develop a network of charging hubs for EV drivers across China and have already opened a pilot site in Guangzhou, with 10 fast charging units ranging from 60kW to 120kW.

DiDi’s transportation platform, which offers users a range of app-based options including ride hailing, already has around 550 million users and 600,000 EVs running on it.

China is the world’s largest and fastest developing EV market, with around 50% of the world’s battery powered EVs.

Tufan Erginbilgic, BP's Downstream Chief Executive said: "As the world's largest EV market, China offers extraordinary opportunities to develop innovative new businesses at scale and we see this as the perfect partnership for such a fast-evolving environment. The lessons we learn here will help us further expand BP's advanced mobility business worldwide, helping drive the energy transition and develop solutions for a low carbon world.

"Combining BP’s global retail capability, EV charging expertise and experience with DiDi’s unrivalled mobility service platform, our partnership will aggregate demand and provide high-quality, fast, reliable and safe charging for DiDi drivers and the public in China. DiDi is already converting to electric vehicles and has a very large user base, so we expect to drive high utilisation of charging assets from day one."