Cepsa and the car rental company CICAR have signed an alliance to promote electric mobility in the Islands through the development of a joint business model aimed at promoting the electric rental vehicle.
The initiative contemplates that customers who rent an electric vehicle will have included the recharging service in the ultra-fast public network that Cepsa will enable in the Canary Islands, as well as in the CICAR bases. Likewise, Cepsa will offer CICAR its integral service offer from the installation, commissioning, operation and maintenance of said bases.
On the other hand, users will have access to the recharging service through different tools, including a key ring or radio frequency identification card (RFID), the Cepsa mobile application or through the touch screen of the chargers.
During the signing of the collaboration agreement, held this Friday between the director of Mobility & New Commerce of Cepsa, Pierre-Yves Sachet, and the CEO of Grupo Cabrera Medina, Mamerto Cabrera, it was revealed that the first phase of this collaboration will materialize through a pilot test, which will be developed, presumably in Lanzarote, at the beginning of 2023, in parallel to the installation of ultra-fast recharging points in Cepsa Service Stations.
In the meeting, Pierre-Yves Sachet pointed out that "we are going to develop the most important ultra-fast recharging network in Spain to lead sustainable mobility, and alliances with leading companies, such as the one we signed today with CICAR, allow us to accelerate this objective. We want the Canary Islands to have the most sustainable tourist offer and facilitate decarbonization in mobility. With this agreement, we take a great step to achieve it”.
From CICAR, Mamerto Cabrera highlighted the relevance of the agreement since “it continues with our commitment to the environment based, among other aspects, on the increase of electric propulsion vehicles to our current fleet, and thus be able to provide a better and greater supply service to our customers”.
In the case of the Islands, the presence of the electric vehicle is even more important due to the very favorable conditions presented by this modality. The requirement of less autonomy on the part of the vehicles as a consequence of the existence of shorter average journeys, together with the high presence of rental cars, make the Islands a potential market for the expansion of the electric vehicle. An aspect that will be enhanced through the incorporation of the necessary public recharging infrastructure and in which the Cepsa and CICAR agreement will play a key role.
Commitment to the energy transition in the Islands
With this alliance, Cepsa reinforces its commitment to offering global solutions to its clients, in addition to becoming a benchmark for the energy transition also in the Canary Islands, where the company had its origin and where it has been present for more than 90 years, supplying energy to the Archipelago.
Among its most important objectives and within the new strategy of the energy company, `Positive Motion', is the development of the largest ultra-fast recharging network in Spain, for which it will equip most of its stations with recharging points of 150 kilowatts of power and higher. In this way, customers will be able to recharge their vehicles for an approximate time of 20 minutes.
In the next 12 months, the company will install 100 of these ultra-fast chargers in more than half of its establishments in the Islands; and, in 2024, it expects to have these devices in all its Service Stations in the Community.
For its part, CICAR, which belongs to the Cabrera Medina Group, stands, after more than half a century of experience in renting vehicles without a driver, as an important benchmark for the Canary Islands, with more than 80 offices spread throughout all airports, ports, and tourist and strategic areas of the Archipelago. The Group, which directly employs more than 1,600 people, represents major brands such as Opel, Volvo, Peugeot, Fiat, Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Jeep, Ford and Seat, thus having the largest fleet of vehicles in the Canary Islands.
