Petrol station owner says retail experience key to attracting EV drivers to fast chargers

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. 

Wyatt estimated that Viva’s national rollout of chargers would take about five years, reflecting the “logical” take up rate of EVs in Australia.

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.

Slow rollout

Petrol station operators have been slow to add EV charging infrastructure, with Ampol most recently blaming problems in connecting its charging bays to the grid. 

The fuel retailer says those delays mean its 300 charging bays won’t be fully operational until 2025. The company had added just 38 bays to the national charging fleet by August. 

Viva Energy’s NSW project pairs four charge points on each site with solar panels and a battery to reduce demand on the grid – a move that NRMA has already made to get around grid connection problems.

The company spokesperson says the rollout of the NSW chargers has been challenging but “things are progressing relatively smoothly”.

Other priorities

But with two major acquisitions this year, in the form of convenience stores Coles Express and OTR Group, and the debt Viva Energy took on to make them, the company’s priorities lie in marrying these together and cutting spending. 

The company said Australians are spending less, with fuel and shop sales at both brands down by 5 per cent in the last year, and tobacco sales slumping 17 per cent across the company. 

And it’s reduced its capital spending by 10 per cent over the next year, to account for the extra debt its taken on to buy the retail arms, meaning there is is less in the kitty for non-priority projects.

This year, energy transition plans are squarely focused around its Geelong-based heavy vehicle hydrogen refuelling station, rather than consumer EV charging. 

The ARENA-funded hydrogen heavy vehicle refuelling station is set to be commissioned early in 2025, with an associated electric charging station as well well.