Is Shell buying charging stations to slow EV adoption?

That fits best.

 

It is too easy to confuse incompetence with malice.

Bob Wilson

 

it depends on where you travel. if you read ev forums, some have better or worse luck with different brands while others sometimes have the opposite.
shell isn't the only one with maintenance problems, and often highly regarded.
tesla is the only system that nearly always gets great reviews world wide.

 

A Shell in town, has been on PlugShare as coming soon for nearly 3 years. Don't hold your breath. A Shell on the way to work, took two years to put up the stations. They sat there, never turned on, from last December to September of this year, where they just disappeared overnight. Maybe Shell is playing a shell game.

 

Matches my experience with Shell in Corinth MS. It was shown in plugshare but when I got there ... nothing. I suspect Shell feed their "plans" to plugshare and didn't follow through.

Bob Wilson

 

I wouldn't put it past an oil company to do something like that.

However, high-power charging stations are notoriously difficult to design, power, set up, and maintain (they use huge amounts of DC power, at different voltages, over different plug standards). The industry suffers from a serious lack of capital investment outside of Tesla.

On a side note, I've often thought that a restaurant chain combined with charging stations could be something worth while. For one thing, the place wouldn't smell like diesel and gasoline, making the restaurant 100x better. Also, since people are stuck there for a bit longer, there may be more interest in sitting down to enjoy a good meal while charging.

 

My local mass charging station is just off a major highway, 50 years from Starbucks, 150 yards from a grocery store. 12 stalls. Roughly half way between the state capital and a resort destination of some reputation ...Pinehurst. Planed by the team that got fired by Elon.

 

Although there are reports of re-hires, this screw-up rationalizes selling a bunch of my TSLA stock.

Bob Wilson

 

I stopped by a Whole Foods Paycheck this morning and happened to notice about a half dozen EV chargers in the parking bay. They were all Shell-branded, and none looked broken. Only one in use.

This made me consider the idea that (much like their retail gasoline operations) it could be that Shell is concentrating on maintenance and upkeep in the rich neighborhoods.

 

The Volta stations that Shell took over around here aren't as reliable as they used to be.

 

Here today, gone tomorrow and they were never actuated. Two Shell Recharge stations next to the Stop sign. Bottom photo, an empty corner.

 

I didn't think to include it in that brief post- I travel for a living, and I happened to be in Burbank that day. It was also very early in the morning, so there were maybe 5 other cars in the entire parking garage.

Another detail: The one charging bay that was in use? It was right next to a big placard that stated "Charging is for customers while shopping," and the car was occupied by somebody very obviously not shopping.

Made me think that maybe the dissatisfaction with this arrangement is not one-sided.

Also, did everyone in the EV/charging world already forget about bagging the handles?

 

interesting. the whole foods near me removed the free charger and had chargepoint or someone similar replace it.
i don't think shell would accomplish much by driving volta into the ground. more likely, they weren't prepared for the massive maintenance needed to keep them up and running. it's an industry wide problem, except for tesla.