Gas Stations are Changing Globally. How Has It Changed in Your Town? (Part 1: Asia)

Gas stations across Asia are turning into charging stops for electric cars, as fuel companies team up with automakers and utilities to add fast chargers to their existing sites instead of building new lots from scratch.

In China, automaker BYD is working with Sinopec, the country's largest fuel retailer, to install fast-charging equipment at more than 30,000 of its stations. These chargers can bring a compatible car's battery to nearly full in under ten minutes. In the Philippines, Shell Pilipinas and ACMobility plan to add more than 2,500 charging points nationwide, starting with 50 Shell stations along a major long-distance travel route. Other efforts are underway in Malaysia, where the national utility is pairing chargers with solar power at retail outlets, and in Indonesia, where the state power company is expanding its public charging network, which already includes more than 1,100 stations.

Singapore is taking a different approach given its limited space, with new fast chargers that combine solar power and battery storage to keep charging times under 15 minutes.

None of this changes what you can do at home right now, but it points to where charging infrastructure is headed. If you drive an electric vehicle or are thinking about one, it's a sign that quick top-offs away from home are becoming easier to find, even as most day-to-day charging for homeowners still happens overnight in the garage or driveway.