BP signed a $100 million contact with Tesla last year to purchase Superchargers for its own charging locations
May 10, 2024 at 10:03
- Elon Musk recently let go of around 500 employees from the company’s Supercharger division
- BP Pulse aims to establish 100,000 EV charging points worldwide by 2030
- Tesla’s revised Supercharger strategy could help other EV charging companies
The EV charging division of oil and gas giant BP will invest $1 billion in the expansion of its charging network and wants to snap up existing Tesla Supercharger sites that are in peril.
Earlier this month, Elon Musk shocked the industry when he fired most of Tesla’s Supercharger team and said the company would slow the expansion of its Supercharger charging network. Now, BP Pulse is “aggressively looking to acquire real estate to scale our network, which is a heightened focus following the recent Tesla announcement.”
Read: Oil Giant BP Is Getting Serious About EV Charging
“If there are stranded real estate partners who are looking for someone to call, they should feel free to pick up the phone and call me or look me up on LinkedIn,” BP Pulse Americas chief executive Sujay Sharma said.
Sharma added that the company is also seeking talented staff with experience in the EV charging field, meaning it could scoop up some of the 500 staff that Tesla fired, Bloomberg notes.
BP is serious about expanding its charging network. Last year, the firm signed a $100 million contract with Tesla to purchase its Superchargers and introduce them at BP charging points nationwide. BP already has 27,000 charge points worldwide and hopes to grow to 100,000 by 2030.
Interestingly, BP cut 10% of its workforce in its EV charging business in April. It also said it will reduce the number of countries it focuses on from 12 to just four; namely the United States, the UK, Germany, and China.
It’s not just BP that could benefit from Tesla’s decision to slow its Supercharger expansion plans. Rival charging firm EVgo will be able to pick up some of the slack in growth left by Tesla, chief executive Badar Khan said, noting Tesla’s move represents “a fairly significant change in the competitive dynamic in the charging space.”
