Tesla signs deal with 2nd gas station operator to sell its Supercharger directly

Tesla has signed a deal with the EG Group, a massive gas station and convenience store operator, to sell its Supercharger hardware to be deployed as an EG-branded product.

It’s the second of such deals that Tesla has made in just a few weeks.

Last month, Tesla surprised many when it announced it reached a deal with BP to sell them $100 million worth of Supercharger hardware to be deployed at BP gas stations across the US under the BP brand.

It marked one of the rare times that Tesla has sold Superchargers to third parties and the first time it has done it on such a large scale.

In the announcement, Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla’s head of charging infrastructure, said that this is a new business that Tesla is entering.

It didn’t take long to confirm that. Today, EG Group announced that it signed a deal with Tesla to buy Supercharger units:

EG Group is pleased to announce that it has agreed to a deal to acquire Tesla’s latest ultra-fast charging units for EG’s rapidly growing ‘evpoint’ business across the UK and Europe.

Not unlike the BP deal, EG Group confirmed that the stations would not be branded Tesla Superchargers but rather their own branding, which is “evpoint.”

They wrote in a press release:

• The chargers will be branded “evpoint” and will leverage Tesla’s industry-leading technology.
• The hardware will operate on an open network basis, meaning that all drivers will be able to access evpoint chargers, regardless of the brand of vehicle they drive.
• The chargers will also support the Plug and Charge protocol, which simplifies and automates payments. 
• The first of the new charger units are expected to be rolling out before the end of the year.

Unlike the BP deal, EG Group nor Tesla revealed the size of this deal.

However, Imraan Patel, chief strategy and business officer of EG Group, noted that the company currently has 600 EV chargers and plans to have more than 20,000:

Our aim is to deliver a three-pronged strategy to help us reach our energy transition goals. These include EV charging, supporting alternative forms of vehicular fuel, and broader carbon reduction, all of which are central to our strategy of helping the world transition to a lower carbon future. We have made significant progress to date on EV charging, with more than 600 chargers across 189 sites already deployed and a pipeline prepared with an ambition for evpoint to roll out more than 20,000 chargers across c.3,600 of our own sites over time with opportunities across third party locations also being pursued.

EG Group operates over 6,000 sites across several markets:

Tinucci commented on the deal: 

The rapid installation of reliable, easy-to-use EV charging infrastructure is the right step towards a sustainable future and a key area of focus for us at Tesla. For this reason, we’re excited to make our fast-charging hardware available for purchase to EG Group, and other leaders in the space.

It sounds like more of these deals could be coming in near the future.

Electrek’s Take

This is quite disruptive for Tesla. While we don’t have the details, we have previously seen evidence that Tesla’s Superchargers are several times cheaper to deploy than fast-chargers from competitors.

If it starts becoming a major distributor of chargers to third parties, like ABB or Tritium, it would likely spin the whole industry on its head.

This is kind of what is happening in the US with level 2 charging since NACS became the standard and Tesla started to offer the Universal Wall Connector.

Surprisingly, Tesla has managed to also make an impact in Europe now, where the connector war has been over for a while.