Ampol partners with BYD to charge EV uptake across Australia

Australian petroleum heavyweight Ampol has announced a partnership with BYD Automotive, the fourth largest battery electric vehicle company in the world, to support the uptake of electric vehicles in Australia.

Under the new agreement, the two organisations say they will build an integrated offering for BYD customers for vehicle charging both at home and on the road.

Luke Todd, CEO of EVDirect, the importer of BYD Automotive’s Atto 3 battery electric car in Australia, says the partnership with Ampol will give Australian BYD customers confidence in the availability of charging wherever they need it.

That’s important, because a lack of charging availability is a key barrier, both in practical and perceived terms, to EV uptake.

“Ampol is Australia’s leader in transport fuels and has embarked on a strategy to become the Australian leader in EV charging,” says Todd.

“With the ongoing rollout of AmpCharge across Ampol forecourts and at destinations like shopping centres along with the ability to deliver charging in the home, BYD customers can feel confident they will be able to charge their EV wherever they need.”

Ampol will deliver BYD customers AmpCharge home charging stations, business charging stations for fleet customers, as well as subscription packages and charging offers, including bundles for public and private charging.

Ampol has already committed to deliver AmpCharge EV fast charging infrastructure at almost 140 locations, with 360 charging bays set to be delivered, joining the five charging stations currently active at Ampol sites.

This includes a commitment to setting up at 120 sites nationally by December 2023, under an agreement with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), partially funded by the Federal Government.

The company also recently announced it would deliver 110 fast charging bays at 19 new sites throughout Greater Sydney and regional NSW in partnership with the NSW State Government, which co-funded more than AU$9 million.

These include a series of four 10-bay charging stations, including one in western Sydney.

Ampol has taken great pains since its rebrand from the Caltex masthead to distance its public image from a heavy-polluting past and transition into the renewables market. In late 2021 it unveiled a plan to transition its offering into the retail electricity market, hoping to ride the decarbonisation wave.

“Energy markets and consumer preferences will continue to converge, so as such, the structure of the business is aligned to our future view of the market,” Ampol said at the time.

“Supplying energy to household and business consumers is a key pillar of our future business direction.”

Nonetheless, the company is still one of Australia’s biggest providers of diesel and petrol fuel. It has committed to achieving net-zero operations emissions by 2040, which will see it slash emissions from its fuel refining operations and service stations, but will not include the emissions embedded in the fuel it sells, which makes up 77% of the company’s baseline carbon emissions.

The company has come under fire in the past for alleged ‘greenwashing’.

In August this year, the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) filed a complaint with the Ad Standards agency over Ampol’s carbon neutral petrol and diesel products, alleging that many of the carbon offsets Ampol’s carbon neutral fuel was based upon were unverifiable, and often sited abroad.

“Greenwashing is dangerous because it delays meaningful action on greenhouse gas emissions and fools the increasingly climate-conscious public into thinking that harmful products are actually good for the environment,” said EDO managing lawyer Kirsty Ruddock at the time.

That complaint was dismissed in September.