Shell plans to install more than 500 electric-vehicle charging stations across Europe

Royal Dutch Shell has joined forces with several major car manufacturers to expand its electric-vehicle charging business into Europe as the world's second-biggest oil company adapts to the growing sustainable energy trend.

Shell announced on Monday it had signed a deal with INOITY, a German venture between BMW Group, Daimler, Ford and Volkswagen, that would see it provide charging stations across 10 European nations.

The agreement came just one month after Shell acquired Europe's largest electric-vehicle charging provider NewMotion.

Markets including the UK, France and China have all previously made announcements regarding their plans to phase-out fossil-fueled cars in the coming decades, leading several major energy companies struggling to figure out where to go next.

Shell and IONITY's charging points were set to be placed across 80 of the former's biggest highway fuel stations in Europe and would contain an average of six posts in each station that took five to eight minutes to charge an electric vehicle.

In September, the firm's top downstream executive John Abbot said, Shell, which opened its first rapid-charging point for electric cars at gasoline stations in the UK in October, wanted 20% of profit margins from its retail forecourts to come from vehicles that didn't burn diesel or gasoline by 2025.

As of 1520 GMT, shares had slipped 0.92% to 2,316.00p.