Royal Dutch Shell said on Monday that it is launching an electric vehicles (EV) charging service at some of its gas stations in Singapore, a first foray into the EV charging market in Southeast Asia.
Shell will open Shell Recharge, the EV service, at 10 Shell stations by October this year, beginning with a charging point at the Shell Sengkang station this month. The 10 EV charging stations will represent nearly 20 percent of Shell's retail network in Singapore.
The Shell Recharge points, which typically provide from 0% to 80% charge in around 30 minutes, will be compatible with most electric vehicles in Singapore, the Anglo-Dutch oil and gas major said in a statement.
According to Shell's analysis, people in Singapore are concerned about the lack of enough and fast charging options for their EVs, therefore Shell is launching the service at strategic locations, Aarti Nagarajan, General Manager, Shell Retail Singapore, said.
A study commissioned by Shell to independent market research firm Edelman Intelligence last month showed that more than 1 in 2 Singaporeans-or 52 percent-are discouraged from buying or using an EV as they think there are not enough charging stations in Singapore.
Related: Six Brilliant Clean Energy Ideas That Never Made It
"To meet the country's climate action goals, Singapore needs more and cleaner energy solutions to power lives, businesses and transport sustainably. Shell Recharge is one such example of how we make it more convenient for our customers to embrace cleaner mobility. Shell aims to make more of such low-carbon energy solutions available in Singapore in the months and years to come," Aw Kah Peng, country chairman of Shell Companies in Singapore, said in the statement.
Shell, like the other European oil majors, has started investing in new energy and technologies to diversify their portfolios and to meet growing calls from investors and the public to pay more attention to green technologies and curbing emissions.
Shell has invested in NewMotion, one of Europe's largest EV charging providers.
EV enthusiasts will be buying into the 'cool factor' of zero emission vehicles, driving EVs fleet growth regardless of the oil price fluctuations, the head of Shell's global retail business, Istvan Kapitany, told Bloomberg in an interview last November.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More
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