Ampol Bought Evie. Geely Bought In. BP Got Out.

The global view

The number of the week comes from China: public chargers there run at 5-6% utilisation against a 10-15% breakeven threshold. That one line explains most of what follows. When the sockets earn half of what they need to, you stop building your own network and start sharing someone else's.

So Geely took 30% of NIO Power at a valuation of about 16 billion yuan. Ampol paid A$225 million for Evie Networks, BP sold its French fast-charging business, and Switzerland folded four brands into one. In March we argued that oil majors would sell and fuel retailers would buy. This week both halves of that sentence turned up, on different continents.

One caveat on our own work. In August we wrote that nobody is buying CPOs, they're buying the pieces. Sorégies and Geely fit that pattern. Ampol bought 100% of a company, so the exception now has a name and a price.

Europe

BP's retreat continues. French energy provider Sorégies is buying BP Pulse's French fast-charging business: 32 operating sites with over 600 charge points, 14 more in development, plus hardware stock, transformer stations and staff. The price is undisclosed and the sites will be rebranded Alterna énergie. After the Netherlands and Austria, this is the third exit, and the buyer is a utility, the category our March thesis had on the selling side.

Switzerland consolidated without a buyer at all. Energie 360° merged Gofast, Swisscharge, Move Mobility and its own mobility arm into Joya, which starts life as the country's largest CPO with 7,500 public points, 1,800 of them fast. It plans CHF 150 million of expansion by 2030 and Plug & Charge by 2027, which, as we found in August, is a promise easier to make than to locate.

The truck story got a funder and a reality check. The Commission will steer its infrastructure funds primarily to truck and bus charging because banks won't, and it counts nearly 40,000 e-trucks against about 3,000 suitable public points. That is a more generous definition than the 730 dedicated plugs above 350 kW we have been using. Meanwhile an ICCT and Fraunhofer ISI study puts 70-80% of truck charging at the depot, with the top 1% of locations taking 25-33% of national energy. Fewer places, more specific places: that is the shape of our own map.

Germany's Bundesnetzagentur put EVs largely on par with stationary storage: a smart meter now suffices, no solar system required, and the flat safety discount drops from 0.5 to 0.2. That improves the household sums we ran in what a parked electric car is worth, though the agency's own head says cars, hardware and tariffs still have to catch up. And the UK will drop separate planning applications for cross-pavement charging, opening home tariffs to around eight million households without a driveway, subject to whichever highway authority they happen to live under.

North America

Washington finalised fuel economy standards of 34.9 mpg by 2031, down from 50.4 under the previous rule, and will end credit trading from model year 2028. US EV sales were already down 28% in the first quarter. The demand curve for every American CPO just got flatter.

Ionna built anyway. The eight-automaker venture has more than doubled to over 180 sites and 1,500 ports in 30 states, over 40 of them at Circle K, and now calls itself the country's largest 400 kW network. It skipped a proprietary app for Plug & Charge and tap-to-pay, at a base rate of 39 cents per kWh.

The better quote came from CEO Seth Cutler: infrastructure has to be for-profit or it'll never survive. We have been asking what that takes since 2023. Hearing it from a company owned by eight carmakers is new.

On peak power, the gap widened. Three weeks ago we had EVgo putting 500 kW hardware outside grocery stores; its 750 kW launch has now slipped from late 2026 to sometime in 2027. The 2,250 kW Geely charger we reported last week is already operating in five Chinese cities.

China

Last week Geely built the biggest charger. This week it bought into the biggest swap network. A Geely unit will take 30% of NIO Power, valued at about 16 billion yuan, paying with its Yiyi Power swap subsidiary plus 640 million yuan in cash. Our arithmetic: 30% of 16 billion is 4.8 billion, so the cash is roughly an eighth of the price and the contributed business is the rest.

The trade runs both ways. NIO takes 10% of Geely's charging arm Haohan Energy, the two charging networks will interconnect, and Geely will build swap-capable passenger cars for NIO's 4,126 stations. NIO still targets 10,000 swap stations by 2030, and says other carmakers are welcome.

The reason is the utilisation figure. 21st Century Business Herald puts public charger utilisation at 5-6% against a 10-15% breakeven. A month ago we noted China had started counting what its sockets deliver rather than how many it adds. This is what that count looks like on a balance sheet, and it is why we keep returning to execution over installed base.

India

India's most interesting document this week was a contract. Telangana is handing 200 Hyderabad charging stations to private operators for ten years at a fixed ₹13 per kWh, with 95% monthly uptime guaranteed or ₹500 per charger per day in penalties. That puts a price on downtime, which most markets still decline to do.

The timing suits. A new IEEFA report argues that reliability and interoperability, not charger counts, are now the sector's binding problems. Uttar Pradesh supplied the counter-example: 99 MoUs signed out of 238 identified sites, and a second phase already targeting 1,500 more locations.

HPCL's forecourts were busy. Mahindra's Charge_iN opened its first HPCL site on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway with 180 kW dual-gun chargers, and Energy In Motion plans truck battery-swap hubs at HPCL stations on three freight corridors within 18 to 24 months. Further north, Jammu and Kashmir notified an EV policy with 900 charging sites, 140 fast-charging hubs and a winter validation protocol for sub-zero operation.

Rest of Asia

Last week Korea used price to move charging to lunchtime. This week it took over the handshake. Hyundai, the climate ministry and the Korea Environment Corporation unveiled a national Plug & Charge certification system, built on certificates and issuing authority Hyundai handed to the state in July.

A pilot on public chargers runs to December, private CPOs follow, and launch is set for February 2027. Europe mandated Plug & Charge and, as we documented, cannot say where it works. Korea is trying one certificate authority with a government stamp, against a backdrop of 12,531 public fast-charger fault reports since 2022.

Vietnam is opening up from a smaller base. VETC's platform links seven operators across 235 stations in more than 30 provinces, and the trade ministry is consulting on a national charger regulation tentatively effective July 2027.

Oceania

Last week Ampol found the cheap grid connection. This week it wrote the expensive cheque. Australia's largest fuel retailer will buy 100% of Evie Networks for A$225 million, adding more than 1,030 bays for a combined 1,425 or so across over 400 sites.

Our arithmetic on the price: at most about A$218,000 per acquired bay, before whatever the pipeline and the sites are worth. Ampol targets A$30 million of annualised EBITDA within three years and breakeven for the combined charging business in 2028. It also says AmpCharge sessions rose 116% in the first half.

The deal needs ACCC clearance and should close in the first half of 2027. A fuel retailer buying the country's largest charging network is the trade we described in March, in its purest form so far. The seller, for the record, was backed by a former coal magnate.

South America

A thin week. The only mention came from an Arthur D. Little ranking of EV cost and regulatory advantage, which places Brazil among the lowest-scoring countries, alongside Saudi Arabia, New Zealand and South Africa. Norway leads with 32.2 points.

Africa

Eskom delivered the most useful sentence a utility has offered this year. It has enough generation for a decade of EV growth, and the problem is the residential low-voltage network, which was never designed for home charging. Its answer is mandatory smart, remotely controllable chargers and EV-specific tariffs. That is last week's flexible-connection story, arriving at the garage wall.

Kenya's regulator scrapped the 15,000 kWh monthly cap on EV charging consumption. Monthly charging revenue has grown from under KSh1 million to KSh35.25 million, and registered EVs from 1,378 in 2022 to 39,324 by 2025, mostly motorcycles.

In Côte d'Ivoire, EV.Tech, which runs 70 stations and is the country's first dedicated local charging operator, secured investment from Enko Capital to expand.