The Knowledge: The plans behind Shell's 360kW EV chargers

Ionity, which is jointly owned by a consortium of car makers including BMW, Hyundai and Volkswagen, has 17 locations in the UK with around 100 chargers, while Gridserve/Electric Highway has promised to install 150 ultra-rapid chargers of 350kW this year. Both these rivals use ABB hardware, although of the previous generation.

Shell’s new units are 10kW more powerful than the 350kW chargers of rivals and have more features, the most obvious being a pair of tethered CCS charging cables – in place of the 350kW unit’s single cable – to allow each unit to charge two cars with either a fixed or flexible split of power.

For Shell, the cost of installation is reduced and simplified by a redesign of the internal electric-feed cabling.

However, Kapitány said that the new ultra-rapid chargers still require considerable groundworks and upgrading of the local electricity grid. 

At some point in the future, he believes advances in electrical engineering design will see the volume of groundworks for ultra-rapids reduced.

“We’re working on it, but how can you do it? That’s a secret, and of course we're working with our suppliers on this,” he said.

Shell has 250 people at its Hamburg Technical Centre working on developments in fuels, greases and lubricants, including e-fluids for next-generation immersion cooling of battery, hydrogen and charger technology.

The ABB Terra won the tender to supply Shell only after it had won through a series of lab tests.

“New chargers are fully validated, tested and proved here, put under heavy stress in the lab, to ensure they live up to our requirements,” said Shell.

They undergo hot and cold-weather testing in a climatic chamber and are tested on a fleet of up to 20 vehicles, while emulators can simulate either vehicle charging systems or the chargers themselves to probe for problems in their software and hardware.

There are limitations though on total power draw from the grid, so the Terra features two additional charging modes – either a fixed 180kWhr split for two cars or a ‘dynamic mode’ that allows the first car connected to take a higher flow, say 250kW, while the second one takes the balance.

Shell’s plan is to roll-out a “minimum” of 150 Terra chargers, with the possibility of moving to 200 if demand develops, to a selective group of its 1000 UK service station network.

Exact locations are still to be announced, but they will be high-throughput, busy motorway service stations or urban sites and not rural or remote locations.

“These will be really selective sites. Not all our sites are suitable. You need quite a lot of traffic to justify these chargers,” said Kapitány.

Germany will get the first network of Terras this year, with a similar plan of 150 minimum and 200 maximum, which is a lower density distribution than the UK, given that Shell has nearly 2000 service stations in Germany.

Pricing will also be interesting, and Shell is keeping quiet on pence per kWhr for the moment.

It currently charges 55p per kWhr for its 150kW chargers, while Ionity charges 72p (at 350kW) and Gridserve/Electric Highway offers a very keen 39p or 45p, depending on location.

Of course, drivers on special deals, perhaps because they have just bought a new EV, will pay less, but it makes sense that Shell’s headline price will at least match Ionity’s and might exceed it to reflect the faster charging rate.

But how long these prices can be maintained past the autumn is a moot point, with today’s business price of 24p per kWhr under review by the government and due for revision in September.

Q&A: István Kapitány, global executive vice-president, Shell Mobility

What's the business case for Shell of moving into car-charging?

"We already have economies of scale: the properties, the people, 1000 service stations in the UK. Adding chargers is adding an activity to the marginal costings. We have no huge additional costs.”

And your competitors?

“If you're a standalone, you have to lease the land, build the infrastructure and pay people just for this. Therefore the starting cost is astronomical. The majority of the EV charging networks are loss-makers.”

So can you make a profit out of car charging in the UK?

“The economics are dependent on how you do it. Electricity doesn’t have a big margin, but it does have a margin. Basically because we already have scale, we're already in the black.”

Europe is in an energy crisis. Can your business model for charging survive steep rises in wholesale electricity prices and will prices go up for consumers?

"We can’t talk about pricing, but I can tell you Shell is in this for the long-term. And we're very committed to this change to the business, because it's our core business."

How do you see Shell’s service stations developing in future?

"The business I'm running today, 99.999% of the cases a driver finds a pump with great quality fuel. Today’s e-mobility customers have a slightly different experience. Our job is to make the e-mobility experience equally as good."

Your Ubitricity network in London has faced numerous technical problems. Are they solved?

"Yes, we believe so. We were supplied with circuit-breakers that weren't up to specification. We've now changed those at all 5000 of our posts."

Q&A: Ulrich Aschenbroich, managing director, ABB E-Mobility Germany

What's special about the Terra 360 charger?

"Apart from its world-best power output, we've reduced the footprint of the unit and made it easier to install with a single power-feed cable into the unit, but also the customer user interface is better and repositioned lower, to make it wheelchair accessible, for example."