Ampol CEO Matt Halliday (Supplied).
Ampol has opened another front in the battle for electric vehicle business with plans to sell bundled home charging kits and power to owners of Hyundai EVs.
“As the nature of mobility changes and as electric vehicles become a significant proportion of fleets over time, we will become a large provider of electricity to the customer,” Ampol CEO and managing director Matt Halliday told The Driven.
“At the moment we distribute a fuel product as a form of energy across our forecourts. But as the transition unfolds we will provide different forms of energy.”
Ampol is looking at selling home charging kits that include both charge infrastructure and power as part of a collaboration with Hyundai.
The more immediate benefits of that agreement will be deals for Hyundai EV buyers on power prices at Ampol’s new network of 120 ARENA-backed fast charging sites.
Ampol has already launched a fuel and electricity pilot project for up to 100 of its employees for use at home and “on the go” after receiving a licence from the Australian Energy Regulator to sell electricity as a retailer, following in the footsteps of telco Telstra and oil giant Shell.
Halliday says it’s important for the company to become an active participant in the wholesale power market, but given the chaos seen this year in the National Energy Market they are moving cautiously.
“We see [electricity retailing] as a real opportunity to provide solutions to different customers,” he says.
Keeping hydrogen ticking over too
The collaboration with Hyundai will also see the two companies work on and lobby for developing a transport hydrogen sector.
Hyundai, which has a small fleet of NEXO fuel cell cars used by the ACT government and Brisbane police, has been vocal for almost a decade on the potential for hydrogen to power transport in Australia.
Hyundai COO John Kett says while the Victoria-NSW government Hume Hydrogen Highway project – initially proposed by the company in 2014 – is welcome, the car maker would like to see metro refuelling sites rolled out to support light commercial vehicles, as well as heavy transport.
Although the shift to fuel cell vehicles is still slow, Kett says momentum is building.
“These discussions are becoming more real because the attitudes of the decision makers of the country and the states are changing,” he told The Driven.
“I think the progress will be slow but there is focus because people are genuinely interested in what the solution could look like.”
New technologies such as a fuel cell-electric hybrid car – another concept being tested by Hyundai – will make both types of vehicles even more attractive to future drivers.
EV supply chain problems linger
Currently about 4 per cent of Hyundai’s business is EVs, Kett says.
Supply chain problems mean they can’t meet demand in Australia right now and Kett doesn’t see these issues being ironed out until late 2023, at the earliest.
But with government standards on emissions in the wings, EV makers will need to be prepared for potentially higher demand.
Kett says the federal government’s planned emissions standards will provide some clarity in terms of lead times to enable the company to gear up manufacturing to satiate Australia’s new wave of EV buyers.
Keyword: Ampol pitches EV home charging and power bundles in deal with Hyundai