BP Says Not All Electric Car Chargers Are Profitable Yet

(Bloomberg) -- BP Plc isn’t turning a profit yet on all its car-charging stations, but the U.K. oil giant expects that to change as more electric vehicles come onto market.

“I would not say we are breaking profits in all spaces there,” Christian Girardeau, electrification director at BP, said Tuesday at the BNEF Summit in San Francisco. But he added the company has been able to make money through energy delivery through its EV partnerships. “Just on the energy side,” he said, “we are more in the black than in the red.”

The company has so far installed close to 10,000 chargers and has set a goal of 70,000 stations by 2030, with a big expansion effort in Europe and China, Girardeu said. It’s adding electric car charging to a suite of energy services it provides as the oil major seeks to move beyond its traditional oil and gas business.

In 2018, BP bought Chargemaster, the U.K.’s largest electric vehicle charging company at the time. The oil company has also formed a joint venture with Didi Chuxing to build out charging infrastructure in China.

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