The biggest order yet for a Brisbane-based electric car charging company comes as oil giant Shell buys the Volta charging network in the US.
Oil company BP has placed a major global order for more than 1,000 fast chargers with Queensland-based startup Tritium, as the oil giants continue their push towards electric vehicle power.
It comes as Shell confirms its $169 million purchase of Volta, which operates a charging network with 3,000 sites in the US and a small number in Europe, as reported by automotive news.
The deal with BP Pulse, the company’s electrification brand, is for the chargers to be used in Australia, the US, the UK and Europe and will lead to a massive expansion of Tritium production capacity at its factory American in the state of Tennessee.
Tritium said the BP deal is the largest order in the company’s history and will help boost its total revenue by 2023 to around $200 million as it ramps up production to 11,000 chargers this year.
BP and Shell have started installing electric vehicle chargers in Australia, but only in relatively small numbers at their existing service stations.
While Shell uses a mix of chargers for electric cars overseas, in Australia both Shell and BP use Tritium chargers.
BP Pulse announced in April 2022 that it had placed an order for 1,000 chargers for use in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
BP’s new global deal is understood to have added 1,000 chargers to the company’s order.
Tritium said it intends to manufacture the chargers for the Australia site at its factory in Brisbane, which has an annual production capacity of 5,000 devices.
The US, UK and European chargers will be manufactured at a Tritium factory in Lebanon, Tennessee, which opened in August 2022 and will eventually have a capacity of 30,000 units per year.
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