EG On The Move has announced ambitious plans to embrace electric vehicle charging, and says that “now is the time” for other forecourt operators to follow suit.
Speaking at the PRA/ACS conference on Wednesday, commercial director Ilyas Munshi described how the Top 50 Indie planned to increase to 50 EV locations by the end of the year, with this figure rising to 250 by 2030.
And to “spread the bets with EV”, it plans to grow its network of 160 petrol sites to 500 by 2030.
He told delegates at the Forecourt, Power and Convenience Conference 2025 that currently 48 of the operator’s locations have a total of 270 chargepoints between them.
It has forged a partnership with Tesla, which has enabled it to brand its chargepoints as EV On The Move, and to offer the package to fellow operators.
Just a week after the first anniversary of Zuber Issa taking the EG brand and setting up his own UK-based network, Munshi said that the business has built a strong foodservice and convenience offering, which he describes as essential to support the 20-minute charging dwell time.
“For us as a business we have got the locations and are saying now let’s start exploring EV,” said Munshi who added that the company first ventured into this new revenue stream in 2009, when a planning application in London at a Starbucks required that it installed a charging bay.
“As EV charging has evolved we have gone through the phase of trickle charging or slow charging, then fast charging and we are now in a world of ultra rapid charging, and this is where we feel the moment is now for a lot of retailers to start considering EV as an option,” said Munshi.
“You have got to plan for the future, you have to invest carefully,” he added. “What we are saying is that yeah the take-up is a bit slow, but we are now starting to see the results. Why are we seeing results? Well we are addressing the dwell time for customers.
“So for example when a customer is doing an EV charge what have we got. We have got a very strong convenience offer, we have got a very strong foodservice offer, so the 15-20 minutes it takes to charge to 80% of the vehicle in that time someone can go in to have a coffee, pick up a bite to eat, reply to a few emails, do a bit of work, that addresses the dwell time.”
At the same time, he said technology has improved and the cost of implementing that technology is reducing as well. ”So we think the time is right now that retailers should be considering putting in charging infrastructure on their locations.”
He said that while there are significant costs, with the right partnerships with suppliers such as the Co-op, Spar, Sbarro, Greggs, Starbucks, Popeyes and Subway, there are “massive opportunities to start leveraging EV.”
However, he warned that without a strong convenience and foodservice offering EV drivers will not come to the site for charging.
He added: “Having those strategic partnerships is critical to growth. A lot of people say why can’t you do your own coffee offer, why can’t you do your own logistics and supply and build your own shop brand? Yes, anything is possible in life, but to see the scale and growth that we have realised if we didn’t have our brand partners working alongside us, and understanding the marketplace and customers,then we wouldn’t have seen the growth that we have realised.”
He added. “If you want to protect your business, you have got to be thinking about alternative fuels, and the time is now.”
