Following Tesla’s foray as a charger hardware supplier, the first non-Tesla-branded V4 Supercharger stations are now being deployed.
Last year, 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 to build a non-Tesla branded charging network.
In the announcement of the BP deal, Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla’s head of charging infrastructure, said that this is a new business that Tesla is entering.
Sure enough, Tesla announced another similar deal with the EG Group to build the EV Point charging network in the UK with Tesla Superchargers.
Now, the very first of those Supercharger stations are starting to be deployed in the UK.
EV Point announced today that its first chargers at Asda Express in Uttoxeter are now online:
It’s nice to see them deploy a station with a decent number of stalls (10).
We don’t know how many chargers or stations are involved in this deal, but EG Group noted that the company currently has 600 EV chargers and plans to have more than 20,000.
The group operates over 6,000 gas stations and convenience stores around the world.
Electrek’s Take
This is cool to see. Before, third-party charging stations had to compete with Tesla Supercharger network, especially in Europe, where Tesla opened the network to non-Tesla EVs for a minute now.
But now, charging station manufacturers are going to have to compete directly with Tesla.
This new level of competition should push the industry further, which is exciting.
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