BP Invests $7 Million in Electric Vehicle Charging Firm

Oil company BP is joining a host of other oil companies with its $7 million investment in IoTecha for electric vehicle (EV) charging.

Earlier this year, Shell said it will install more than 500,000 new charging stations by 2025 to meet growing demand globally for EVs, up from 60,000 active charging points today.

IoTecha uses the electricity grid via the internet of things (IoT) to connect EV chargers to vehicles to accelerate the charging process through automated payments as well as energy savings.

The investment will go toward BP’s goals of providing 70,000 public EV charging by 2030.

The investment in IoTecha will help achieve BP’s goal to provide more than 70,000 public EV charging points worldwide by 2030.

At the beginning of the year, nearly all automotive OEMs pledged to primarily manufacture EVs in the next 10 to 15 years and phase out the production of gas and diesel-powered cars.

This is due to an increase in consumer demand for these EVs as well as a push for more environmentally friendly vehicles to fight climate change.

As a result, many more EV charging stations will be needed to meet this upcoming demand. BP said the global EV infrastructure market is forecast to exceed 55 million chargers in buildings by 2030 and these stations will need to adapt to handle new hardware and increased power demand.

IoT charging

IoTecha’s Intelligent Power Platform (IoT.ON) allows private and fleet vehicles with any type of charger for communicating with its charging stations to signal when they need recharging. The platform over time gathers information and identifies patterns and energy requirements across all forms of EV charging.

Additionally, the technology allows EV owners to sell unused electricity back to the grid through vehicle-to-grid (V2G) or bi-directional charging.

The investment from BP will help to scale IoTecha’s operations and will help accelerate mainstream adoption of EVs, BP said.

Source: electronics360