From Guzzle to Graze: A question of convenience in the paradigm shift in energy retail

Electrification is changing consumer behaviour as drivers switch from brimming and draining petrol and diesel tanks to topping up the battery little and often at locations they choose to stop at. Creating the charging infrastructure to support this transition is a one-off opportunity for filling station owners to future-proof their business in a sustainable, profitable way

Filling stations are just another part of the urban landscape, and Gilbarco Veeder-Root knows this better than most, having been at the heart of the sector for more than 150 years. But with the transition from combustion engines to electric vehicles, filling stations are beginning to lose their pre-eminence in energy retail as pumps dispensing fossil fuels increasingly compete with cables carrying electricity.

Which means that for those who would call themselves mobility service providers, adding an EV Charging point will be right at the top of the list because the worldwide shift to electric vehicles is accelerating. This summer, sales of EVs overtook diesel for the first time in Europe, and Europe and the UK will ban the sale of new combustion engine cars from 2035.

The US – the home of the large displacement V8 – is also well on the way towards an electric future, with the government setting the ambitious goal of having half of all new vehicles sold to be EVs by 2030.

Worldwide, the International Energy Agency believes that share needs to reach around 60 per cent for us all to remain on track to achieve net zero CO2 emissions in 2050.

There’s no doubting the collective will to achieve that. But we all recognise this can only happen in step with massive investment in public charging infrastructure. In Europe alone, a study by McKinsey finds that by 2030, a tenfold increase in charging points is needed – and to scale up from the current 340,000 to 3.4 million could cost in excess of €240 billion. And let’s not forget: 2030, in automotive industry terms, is not far away – around the same as the lifecycle of a new model.

But this is much more than a questions of numbers. As well as having enough charge points, it’s essential to deliver the charging experience necessary to ensure that electrification is attractive to all and requires no more effort or thought than filling a tank with petrol or diesel does today.

Let’s not sugarcoat it. Broken charging units, expensive electricity supply, difficult-to-fathom payment systems, a plethora of different apps, RFID cards, and much more, have blighted the experience for charge point operators and their end customers alike. These issues can quickly sour the ownership experience for EV drivers and are among the key concerns cited by consumers who have yet to make the switch.

Setting up a reliable, efficient, effortless-to-use and, above all, profitable electric charging station is daunting. But much as you might want to, you can’t stick your head in the sand. This isn’t going to go away. You need to do it. And the team here at Gilbarco Veeder-Root are here to help every step of the way.

If you're in the liquid fuel supply business, staying ahead of the curve is crucial, especially as EV market share expands and we approach restrictions on internal combustion engines. Adapting to this changing landscape is key to maintaining business resilience.

So why filling stations? It’s because these, and small supermarkets, are among the most attractive propositions for charging infrastructure development. By their very nature they’re easy to get to, there are lots of them, and they’re built on main roads throughout suburban and urban areas. And, most already provide the services drivers want when charging, including staffed facilities in clean, well-lit locations, food and drink, and restrooms.

For those operating existing wet fuel stations, the need to incorporate an EV charging offer to supplement or replace your existing carbon fuel offer is obvious. But to some who have never offered automotive energy before, the need to create an EV charging station is less clear.

We’ve long been used to waiting for the low fuel level light to appear in the instrument cluster, and then heading to the nearest – or perhaps our favourite – filling station and then brimming the tank again. It’s simple, convenient, familiar, and takes just a few minutes each time.

With EVs, it’s a different story. One of the key ownership advantages of an EV is that you can recharge at home and wake up every morning to a full battery. But not everyone can have their own wallbox, and even for those that do, there will always be a need to charge on the go on long journeys – typically, these chargers are located at roadside or motorway services.

Others want to use alternative locations such as local filling stations and supermarkets, or shopping centres, cinemas, and gyms – in other words, places that are more numerous, easier to get to, with good parking where you’ll be out of the vehicle for a while anyway, and are therefore appealing because you don’t have to kill time waiting to charge.

Instead, you just plug-in and walk into the shop to pick up groceries and a coffee, and when you come back, your battery is topped up. You know you don’t need it back up to 100 per cent – you just want to make sure you’ve got enough range in reserve.

And as EV adoption has spread, many owners also now understand that in the interests of battery longevity, it’s better not to charge 100 per cent every time, and also that the disproportionately long time taken to get from, say, 80 to 100 per cent isn’t worth hanging around for.

Moreover, with state-of-the-art 350kW charge stations, 15 minutes is all you need to get some 220 miles of range into the battery, while commonplace 100kW chargers can deliver around 80 miles in the same period.

So unlike letting your fuel tank reach the point where you’re running on fumes before filling it up, your charging pattern becomes little, but often. As a result, people are increasingly more likely to visit – and search for – locations that offer EV charging as opposed to those that don’t.

In other words, charging gives businesses a competitive advantage. If you operate one of these facilities, then you need an EV charging station to meet your customers’ expectations and deliver an additional and sustainable revenue stream.

You know the world is changing fast but you may not be sure how to keep up with it – or even where to start. And that’s not surprising: there’s a little more to consider here than, say, installing a new Wi-Fi network for your customers.

Neither is it as straightforward as buying the most powerful or most expensive charger you can afford. You also have to think about the best place to install the charger, and how that fits in with the total customer experience. And if you own a chain of 10 filling stations, for example, how do you know which one to install a charger in first – which one will give you the highest return?

Then there’s the energy infrastructure and the back-office stuff to consider: how do I connect to the grid? Should I get solar power or on-site energy storage? How does payment and billing work? What about maintenance and servicing?

Then, you have to be sure that every time a customer plugs in, the charger works seamlessly while at the same time ensuring the electricity you’re providing them with comes at the lowest cost to your business.

Any issues you do have with the charger must be resolved quickly, ensuring both maximum uptime and preserving the reputation of your business as a great place to charge – you can’t afford a bad rating on charging maps or EV owners’ forums.

It’s very complex to make those decisions and having the right guidance is key – and that’s what we deliver. We have got your back because we have developed, optimised, and stress-tested the very best end-to-end EV charging system in the industry.

For sure, that’s a big claim, but it’s one we can back up, given that the top 80% per cent of operators in the Nordics — arguably the hottest market in the world for EVs — use our technology. In total, we manage more than 50,000 charging connectors worldwide.

We all know it’s a very competitive industry. But, unlike entrants new to the energy retail market, we have unrivalled experience of working with customers thanks to our more than 150 years’ experience in the filling station sector.

We have not only the technical expertise in our portfolio, but also the innate understanding of what it takes to ensure the reliable and profitable flow of energy to the consumer in a way that’s second nature to them.

So how do we deliver that? By combining charge points and payment together with our proprietary software tools and unrivalled servicing network to provide customers with a seamless, end-to-end charging solution: one that we can manage from the initial discussions, to installation and commissioning, through to day-to-day running.

Driivz is the name of the backend software that enables charge point operators to run their network efficiently and make money. It does this by taking care of network management, payment and billing, and cloud-enabled, always-on diagnostics and digital toolkit to quickly resolve any problems without the need for a site visit – the majority of issues can be handled in this way.

Driivz is built upon an intelligent, scalable, and flexible software platform that enables it to be integrated into charging networks of any size, whether it’s the first charge point in your chain of filling stations, or the tens of thousands it already manages in some of the industry’s largest networks – the ones which serve over 800,000 drivers in more than 20 countries worldwide.

Our customers actually experience Driivz through what we call EVerse. EVerse is, essentially, us deploying and operating Driivz for them – it’s a “Do It For Me” solution, where we are effectively the silent partner, taking the stress away from customers who don’t want the hassle or are ready to make the (often significant) investment in the monitoring, reporting and service/helpdesk teams required.

This allows the customer to focus on their core business, while we maximise revenue from the charge points they own, whether they sourced the chargers from us, or from a third party – more than 170 different AC and DC types are supported, thanks to the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCCP), which enables maximum hardware compatibility.

Using the EVerse dashboard, our customers have complete 24/7 oversight of their charging network status, together with key performance indicators including utilisation rates, average charging session duration, daily and cumulative electricity consumption, and kilograms of CO2 emissions saved. It also allows tariffs to be set and altered, quickly and easily.

EVerse also includes a driver helpdesk, where our e-Mobility experts are on hand to support end-users with their questions and queries such as payment or problems with the charging process. If there is a fault with the charger itself that can’t be self-healed or solved remotely, we’ll send out one of our expert technicians to fix it.

Then there’s Sparkion: a smart tool designed to ensure that a customer’s chargers receive and supply electricity as efficiently as possible for maximum profit.

Sparkion does this using a wealth of real-time data and AI-driven predictive algorithms to ensure that a customer’s chargers draw electricity from all available sources – the main grid, renewables such as wind and solar, and on-site battery storage – in the most cost-efficient way possible, while maintaining optimum charging performance. This intelligent power management system can mean the difference between a profitable site and a loss-making burden on your business.

In short, we at Vontier and GVR have developed and honed the expertise, resources and technologies to enable businesses to electrify, whether that’s new entrants to the energy retail market or traditional filling stations, fewer and fewer of which exist because of the pressures affecting their bottom line — a report by Boston Consulting Group found that as many as 80 per cent of forecourts are at risk of becoming unprofitable by 2035: electrification will enable those forecourts to have a future and support the growth of EV charging infrastructure.

Initiative and responsibility rest with all of us to hasten delivery of the sustainable, electric mobility system that our world needs. But we can’t wait and see if the EV market will grow as fast as the forecasts predict: we have to act now, for without the right infrastructure in place, we can be certain that it won’t – and that’s not an option.

This is no time to be hedging our bets: electrification is essential, no question. So, let’s work together to ensure that the transition from fossil fuels takes place as quickly and as seamlessly as possible, ensure we all play our part in achieving net zero by 2050, and help to build the foundations for a sustainable energy retail industry fit for the next century and beyond.

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