PetrolPlaza Podcast: How are suppliers preparing for e-mobility?

As global electric vehicle sales steadily rise, the demand for quality charging services is pushing suppliers to provide innovative products that meet the evolving needs of the e-mobility sector. We spoke to four international suppliers – Fortech, A2i Systems, Autofuel and Visa – about their e-mobility solutions and their view of the market.

Federico Marzouk

Federico Marzouk has been Export Manager at Fortech since 2021. With a background in export management within the aluminum sector, Federico was the inaugural team member tasked with spearheading the development of Fortech’s foreign markets. Founded in 2006, Fortech has become the Italian leader in providing payment solutions and services for fuel retailers and is growing internationally. Thanks to his efforts, the company has grown from having facilities only in Italy, Morocco and Spain to successfully expanding its presence into Switzerland and Germany.

“We understand that customers are looking for the easiest and the fastest way to refuel their cars. The best solution is to give a complete portfolio of payment options to the customer."

“The future of the EV customer will not only be on the traditional fuel station but also close to many other daily activities - while they are at the gym, at the supermarket, or even at the hairdresser.”

Frodi Hammer

Frodi Hammer is the Founder and CEO of A2i Systems, developers of a leading AI-driven fuel pricing management solution. Frodi is a former Ph.D. researcher in AI technologies at the University of Southern Denmark. Frodi and Alireza Derakhshan developed a customer-centric AI-driven fuel price optimisation software for OK, one of Denmark’s leading service stations brands. The firm’s solution is currently deployed at over 10,000 stations across ten European countries.

“Predictive pricing is similar to dynamic pricing but that extra fee you put on top of the electricity price should be dynamic throughout the day to optimize operations.”

“If you look at fuel, your competitor landscape is quite static. If you look at EV chargers, suddenly it’s dynamic, because there might be a queue on the best chargers that might be gone one hour. These dynamics are of a completely different scale than what fuel operators are used to.”

Jonas Thor Olsen

Jonas Thor Olsen is the CEO and Co-Founder of Autofuel, a Danish company established in 2014 that develops robotic refueling systems. Currently, they have three generations of robotic systems, with the latest generation of products capable of adapting to all kinds of fuels. The company’s journey in robotic refueling started with convenience, but with the rapid ongoing change in personal mobility, new fuel types, and customer behavior, it has become so much more.

“I don’t see a future where we have chargers for all the people in their apartments along the streets. I definitely see a charging area with a lot of chargers where you park your car and automation will take care of plugging in and plugging out.”

"Autonomous vehicles are taking a little longer than expected. Low speed, self-driving is really interesting, and that is already here."

Richard Campion

Richard Campion is the Head of Fleet and Business Mobility at Visa. After amassing several years of experience in finance and business development, he joined the company as Director of Acquiring in 2017 and has moved up to being Head of Acceptance and his current position. Visa has been heavily involved in mass transit globally over the past few years, enabling tap-and-pay and in-app solutions to help travelers and customers in their payment experiences as they move around the city. The company is looking to replicate much of that work into the EV charging sector.

“There is a significant number of challenges right now when it comes to the payment experiences of EVs. These boil down to three major issues: a fragmented customer experience, no widespread industry standard, and the current and future needs for fleet drivers.”

“Visa is working to create interoperable, secure and seamless EV payment experiences to get customers where they want to go.”

Order of appearance: 00:50- Fortech, 8:52 - A2i, 16:55 - Autofuel, 25:32 - Visa.