Volta stock surges on Shell’s acquisition of the EV charging company

EV charging company Volta is being sold to Shell for $0.86 a share, sending Volta stock higher on the news.

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- Speaking of upswings, I'm watching shares of Volta, the charging and media company, getting bought out by Shell USA in an all-cash deal worth $169 million. Seems like a good move for all parties. Maybe we'll see Volta's chargers at Shell stations soon.

We had the Volta exec on recently to talk about its deal with Kroger, America's largest supermarket chain there. Talk about good location, right, for EV chargers?

DAVE BRIGGS: It's a real big question that we don't talk often enough about-- what does the future look like for gas stations? Shell alone has almost 100,000 in 80 countries. They have plans. They have a half a million EV chargers around the world by 2030.

Can they charge for charging a car? That's going to be a huge question for people like Shell and others. 80% of the charging, McKinsey estimates, will be done at home. What do you figure there? That they'll be able to charge the consumer for charging a car at a gas station in the future?

- I mean, that's in an ideal world, yeah. That that would be the solution, the silver bullet, right? But the problem is that these chargers cost so much money, and most people charge at home.

DAVE BRIGGS: Right.

- So it doesn't make sense. The Philips people were talking about how it was too much money to build these chargers at their locations. So there might be like hybrid use, right, grocery store, Starbucks. Like we said, maybe a Shell station is another alternate, but you gotta need like 15, 20 minutes to hang out to get some fast charging there. So I think that's the issue. And we'll see. Shell might be able to figure it out, but--

DAVE BRIGGS: Yeah, and what's the revenue model?

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, I was gonna say, it all comes down to time and how much time people are willing to stay there and really charge their cars. Because I get a little annoyed after, what, three, four, five minutes at the gas station. We're talking about a lot more time--

DAVE BRIGGS: Right.

SEANA SMITH: --when it comes to charging--

DAVE BRIGGS: [INAUDIBLE]

SEANA SMITH: --your electric car.