MILAN (Reuters) - Stellantis launched a 'Charging & Energy' business unit on Tuesday to make it easier to keep electric vehicles on the road and cash in on an expanding range of services around greener mobility.
The unit will offer a platform called Free2move Charge providing customer services including access to over 500,000 charging points in Europe "through partners" by the end of this year, the company said, as a still insufficient charging network across the industry created 'charging anxiety' for all drivers of electric vehicles (EVs).
The world's third largest carmaker by sales however reiterated that it was still evaluating Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA)'s charging standard after rivals including Ford and General Motors (NYSE:GM) signed deals to adopt it in North America.
"We look forward to discussing more of that soon," Ricardo Stamatti, senior vice president of the new Charging & Energy Business Unit, said.
Stellantis, whose brands include Jeep, Ram, Peugeot (OTC:PUGOY), Fiat and Opel, has plans for 100% of its European passenger car sales and 50% of its U.S. passenger car and light-duty truck sales to be battery EVs by 2030.
The group sees business opportunities from operating charging stations, Stamatti said.
"The margin on energy (used for charging points) itself is fairly rich," he said.
"But ultimately charging is going to be more than energy, it's going to be about what people do while charging (...), think of advertising, retail, media consumption".
The Free2move Charge "ecosystem" will offer other services for private customers of Stellantis brands including support for home charging facility installation, and for businesses.
It will also allow access to a network of public charging points "through partners" in North America, Europe, and other regions to be announced later, Stellantis said.
Investments will be significant while key partners will include energy companies, retailers, hardware manufacturers and utilities, he added. More details will be provided over the course of 2023, including for the business unit's financial targets.