EV charging sites need to stop trying to mimic petrol stations to boost the mass adoption of electric vehicles, according to charging solutions provider Virta.

Stuart Tolley, Geo director UK and Ireland at Virta

Speaking this week as part of a panel of industry experts at the EV Summit, Stuart Tolley, Geo director UK and Ireland at Virta, opined that EV drivers don’t go to petrol stations and asked why charge point sites are trying to be like petrol stations.

Virta, which operates more than 500,000 charging points globally through roaming, also claimed that the involvement of some ‘wet fuel’ providers in the EV charging market had led to a lack of trust.

Tolley told the audience: “We’re seeing more and more companies pull back from the wet fuel companies, who are not providing EV services in the way that they should be, under the expectation that their customership will just go from pumping wet fuel into a vehicle to a dry fuel solution moving to e-mobility. That creates a lack of trust.

“There is a radical change that will happen and we will move away from what we have seen as tradition as the younger generations take over the market. We have all grown up with the wet fuel industry – I remember when I first filled up my car and I remember when I last did it. People have what is basically muscle memory – and that will begin to change.

“The differentiator is how people are taken on the journey and who they remember taking them on that journey. The first time people engage with a vehicle now, they will see something plugged in. What’s that experience like and why does it come from that provider?

“Now is the time to deliver something of difference.”

Tolley was joined on the panel by Werner Bornman, director of technology at Jersey Electricity, who said there were “too many parallels” between EV charging stations and traditional petrol stations.

“We tend to forget the lifestyle that people are buying,” said Bornman. “They’re not buying a car, they’re not buying freedom, they’re buying a lifestyle. I think there’s too many parallels with fuel stations, and we’re trying to mimic that in a new way. But maybe we should just look completely differently and say: ‘What is the EV experience?’ It’s completely different.”

The panel also included Josh Spencer, head of EV and sustainability at Ford & Slater, and Simon Cowling, director of operations and interim lead director for EV at SSE. The link to the discussion is here.