Automotive Business Magazine – Q3 2026 – Digital edition - Flipbook - Page 54
Q&A
SBRS
Milly Standing speaks with Conrad Mummert,
managing director of SBRS Europe, part of Shell, to
understand how the company is bringing the heavy duty
vehicle sector into the electrification conversation
SBRS has created an HGV
charging solution. What
were the project's origins?
Shell bought SBRS in 2022, and with
it, we bought a lot of expertise and
engineering experience in projects like
this one.
Since then, we have done a lot of
projects in the truck space that further
honed these skills.
This is now a combination of all these
experiences, because so far, we have
only done projects and made bespoke
solutions when a customer needed
something specific.
Once HGV fleets electrify, charging
will be a large and scaled challenge and
opportunity. So, we needed something
to put that into place.
This is now preparing us for much
bigger growth.
This product has been in development
for some time now, and it is just
concluding. But we have probably been
on it for the better part of a year now to
design the product we have today.
so in that sense, we at Shell want
solutions that work for our customers.
Are you working with the
Government to make sure
these solutions are deployed
more widely?
There is a regulatory angle to a lot
of the decarbonisation targets at the
European level and at the country level.
Shell, as a group, has a voice, and we
are at some of these tables, but SBRS
does not promote itself to that extent.
We are not the voice of Shell, we are
here to provide solutions to challenges
and opportunities.
A lot of the decarbonisation targets
are currently put on OEMs. The ZEV
Mandate is why we are seeing more
truck OEM offerings, which are still
pricey compared to diesel, but they
work, and now fleets just have to be
aware of the charging infrastructure to
help them decarbonise.
Was there a desire to be a
leader in this sector?
Do you work with fleet
managers to understand
what they need?
We bought SBRS because of the large
commercial transport customer base
that we have historically had for 60
years from the ‘Shell Card’, formerly
‘Euro Shell Card’, and the fact that these
customers need solutions.
Electrification is increasingly
becoming that one thing that everyone
tries to get their heads around. Now, the
question is when things will electrify,
rather than if they will electrify. Between
that ambition and the reality lies work,
Customers usually find what it really
is that they are getting themselves
into, because it is one thing to order
a charger and find an electrician who
can connect it to your grid. But moving
that to the point of electrifying an entire
fleet is very different, both operationally
and investment-wise.
The good thing is that we are coming
from the bus industry, and that is a
sector that has already made quite a
few of these steps.
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