Petro Canada starts deploying its own electric vehicle chargers at gas stations

Petro Canada, formerly a state-owned oil company in Canada but now part of Suncor, becomes the latest oil company to get involved in electric vehicle charging.

They are starting to deploy their own electric vehicle chargers at gas stations – and they are not kidding around when it comes to the charge rate.

We have been documenting a trend of oil companies being increasingly interested in renewable energy and electric vehicle charging as they start to see electric vehicles slowly taking over the car industry.

Shell is arguably leading the charge through its involvement in the new Ionity charging network in Europe. The company is building its own chargers at its own gas stations, and recently acquired a charging network with over 30,000 chargers.

But there are several others, like BP and Total, who have made similar investments.

Now Suncor is also getting involved and they have deployed their first ‘Petro Canada-branded’ EV chargers at a gas station n Milton, Ontario.

Interestingly, the company is deploying some serious power – unlike what many third party networks have been doing in the past.

Local EV owner Luke Chau stopped by the station and reported back to Electrek:

“There are two stations. Each station has two plugs. The CCS has a label 200 kW and the CHAdeMO one is 100 kwW  So far they are testing and getting feedback so there is no cost to charge.  I only have a 2018 leaf so can’t tell if the 100 kW is true as the Leaf’s max charge rate when the temp is not too hot is 45 kW.”

Luke shared a few pictures of the Petro Canada charging station:

Electrek’s Take

If those charge rates are true, it would mean that Petro Canada is testing charging stations to be futureproof for the upcoming next generation of all-electric vehicles that can charge at over 100 kW.

Previously, only Tesla vehicles could and they use Tesla’s own Supercharger network to do it.

We will keep an eye on Petro Canada’s EV charging infrastructure deployment because I think it could have an important impact on EV adoption in Canada.

Featured Image via Plugshare by unknown Soul EV driver.