Shell Recharge Brand Guidelines: NewMotion, Lampposts & One Name

An energy company’s charging brand, assembled from acquisitions.

Shell Recharge is the name under which Shell, the energy company covered in our Shell guide, runs its electric-vehicle charging: chargers on its own forecourts, chargers on residential streets and in car parks, and the app and cards drivers use to start a session and pay. It is less a company with a single founding date than a name laid over a series of purchases, and its history is easiest to follow as a list of those deals.

The first large one came in October 2017, when Shell bought the Dutch charging company NewMotion, according to English Wikipedia’s article on Shell. Dutch Wikipedia, which now files NewMotion under the Shell Recharge name, gives the business’s headquarters as Amsterdam. It says that in 2021 NewMotion and the American charging firm Greenlots began trading together as Shell Recharge Solutions, citing the Dutch trade title Automobiel Management of 4 November 2021, which reported the change as NewMotion becoming Shell Recharge Solutions.

Fast charging on Shell’s own sites came alongside. In July 2019 Shell installed its first 150 kW chargers at London petrol stations, English Wikipedia says, and it also set out plans for 350 kW charging in Europe through an agreement with IONITY. On 26 January 2021 Shell said it would buy all of ubitricity, the Berlin company known for fitting chargers into street lampposts, and in 2023 it announced that ubitricity’s chargepoints would be rebranded under Shell Recharge, according to the same article.

The brand also travelled well beyond Europe. On 4 March 2021 the Bangkok Post reported that Shell Thailand, working with BMW Group Thailand, had installed a rapid charging facility at a Shell station on Kanchanaphisek Road.

Forecourts, lampposts and one app.

The name now covers very different kinds of hardware. At one end are rapid chargers on forecourts, like the London and Thai sites above. At the other are slow kerbside points that drivers leave plugged in overnight. ubitricity, the lamppost specialist, says it was founded in Berlin in 2008, opened a second office in London in 2018 and is now a wholly owned Shell subsidiary within the group’s Mobility division, with further teams in Amsterdam and, since 2022, Paris.

On 10 February 2026 ubitricity announced the takeover of the construction firm FM Conway’s SureCharge network in London, adding more than 2,400 lamppost charge points rated at 4.8 kW to what its press release called the “ubitricity Shell Recharge network.” The transition began in early February, and the company said every one of those points would be rebranded Shell Recharge within two months. ubitricity says the takeover took its UK network past 14,000 charge points across 30 local authorities, and it describes itself as the largest public charging operator in the UK; that is the company’s own claim.

Network totals depend on who is counting and what is included. Dutch Wikipedia, citing Shell Recharge’s own website as consulted in January 2023, gives a network of more than 300,000 charge points in over 33 countries that year. ubitricity alone says it operates more than 20,000 public charging points across the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands, and lists three formats: AC lamppost chargers, AC fast chargers and DC rapid chargers.

Home charging sits under the same umbrella. Dutch Wikipedia, citing Automotive Online of 10 November 2022, says the company agreed at the end of 2022 to supply home charge points and related services to customers of the Vietnamese carmaker VinFast in the Netherlands, France and Germany.

In the United States the brand grew through Volta, the charging company known for chargers carrying large digital advertising screens. Shell bought Volta in early 2023, Utility Dive reported in November 2025. In early 2024 Shell told Volta’s leadership that it was winding down Volta’s operations and taking them in-house, and a Shell spokesperson said the integration led to Volta’s assets being rebranded into the Shell Recharge program, with the Volta Media name kept for advertising. In November 2025 Shell agreed to sell “a substantial portion” of the Volta network to Jolt, the Australian charger maker, according to the same report.

Sponsorship has carried the name too: Dutch Wikipedia, citing Formula E in May 2022, says Shell Recharge was title sponsor of that year’s Berlin E-Prix.

Design and documentation.

EV charging networks sell something drivers cannot see: electricity delivered in a car park or at a service area. Their identities therefore lean on what can be pictured — the charger units, the buildings and shelters around them, the app and the network map — and on the names they give to different kinds of site. Gridserve, for example, sorts its network into Electric Forecourts®, Electric Super Hubs on motorways and Electric Retail Hubs, while Osprey defines a hub as a site with six or more ultra-rapid bays.

Hardware is often shown by name. Networks publish the makers of their chargers and the power ratings they quote for them: Osprey lists units from Circontrol, Wallbox, Tritium and Kempower on its chargers page, and Gridserve has installed ABB units capable of 400kW at its newer sites, according to Transport + Energy. Speeds in this guide are given only as each network or a dated report states them.

The app and the map carry much of the brand. Network maps use colour as a key — Osprey’s marks its fastest sites with orange pins — and apps handle payment, receipts and membership schemes; in 2026 Osprey added a feature that starts a charge as soon as a car is plugged in. Photographs of hubs and forecourts illustrate the networks’ news pages and the partner announcements carried by the trade press.

The other audience is the landlord. Gridserve and Osprey both keep pages for landowners and partners, because their sites are hosted by supermarkets, retail parks, pubs, councils and motorway service areas. This guide sets out what can be checked about each network — who founded it, who owns or funds it, and how it names and presents its sites — and marks clearly what rests on a company’s own word.

A sub-brand that carries its parent’s name.

The naming pattern is the clearest design decision on record. Rather than keeping the names of the businesses it bought, Shell put its own name in front of a plain verb and applied it across them: NewMotion and Greenlots traded as Shell Recharge Solutions from 2021, ubitricity’s lamppost chargers were announced for rebranding in 2023, the SureCharge points in London were being renamed in 2026, and Volta’s chargers were folded into the Shell Recharge program, with only Volta Media kept as a separate name for advertising.

The companies themselves did not all disappear. ubitricity still publishes press releases under its own name, works directly with local authorities and describes its network as part of Shell Recharge, while Shell’s own forecourt chargers carry the Shell Recharge name from the start.

For a design guide, Shell Recharge shows how a large parent can absorb acquired networks under a single descriptive name and stretch it from roadside rapid chargers to kerbside lampposts. Compare bp pulse, another energy company’s charging brand built from acquisitions, and the parent Shell. For this guide we use charcoal, a deep green and an amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Shell Recharge’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.