Couche-Tard does not claim pat answers. But it has begun to winnow its thinking. It has no interest in electricity generation or in the electrical grid. It has found that companies appreciate being able to deal with one charging provider that can help with billing for multiple drivers.
“We have to match the fossil fuel experience,” says Pal Heldaas, director of Europe communications for Circle K. “A fuel station in many ways has the same needs as you have with EV, in regard to how they look, the size of them.” An EV charges at a Circle K station in Norway. While filling a gas tank only takes a few minutes, EV drivers usually take nearly half an hour to charge a car.At the beginning, EV charging tended to be a money loser, even with subsidized chargers. Today, “the investment in EV chargers can be profitable in itself, without the sale of electricity on top of it,” Mr. Hoidahl said.
According to a report by Friends of the Earth, lithium extraction inevitably harms the soil and causes air contamination. As demand rises, the mining impacts are “increasingly affecting communities where this harmful extraction takes place, jeopardising their access to water”