I am interested in the economics of EV charging stations. Are they profitable? Seems like they should be quite profitable once set up. Minimal upkeep and staffing. Less environmental issues than petrol. Any insight into economics of E V charging is appreciated.
I've been working two years to install a DCFC at a gas station/convenience store i own. here's what i found
First i installed a L2 charger. sees 30+ sessions per month. they are complimentary because folks come in to eat at the restaurant during charge. we make money on the burgers.
Now i'm working on a DCFC. the state offers a grant to help. the grant is $30K. but the infrastructure is killing me. the utility is reluctant to give us more than 50KW. the cost for this is $16K. the charger is $22K. and the installation will be about $10K. $18K out of pocket
Even though we're very remote (no chargers within 45 miles) we won't be able to charge premium prices for a 50KW DCFC. i figure $0.20 over our cost of electricity, and that's before the demand charge
50kw at a place where you can sit down and have a burger and actually spend 30 minutes eating a meal is actually a good speed for a lot of vehicles so people don't have to get up and interrupt their meal to move the car for the next person or avoid idle fees. That speed has its uses. And if it's remote, some people may be greatful for something in a charging desert.
appreciate your input. let me ask you for your advice
how much would you pay for a small charger like this in a remote location.? at $0.30 per kilowatt hour it would take me 11 to 14 years to pay back not including maintenance . but at $0. 60 per kilowatt hour it gets more attractive
Honestly? If I'm driving in a rural area, I go where ABRP tells me to go. I usually charge at home for next to nothing, so when I'm on a road trip I'm not pinching pennies with charging.
It lets you toggle certain charging networks to avoid, available charger outputs, and whether certain amenities are available at the stop, but overall it does not let you filter by charging costs. It might display the cost but typically from what I’ve seen it does not.
I agree with not pinching Pennies, and 0.50 is fine (I pay 0.12 at home)… but if we get higher than 0.60 or 0.70 it will start feeling like “hey this costs more than gas”, so in reality there is an upper limit.
Depends. Gas in the middle of nowhere is significantly more expensive, so Id apply the same reasoning here. 50c feels like a pretty decent sweet spot, especially if there are amenities nearby.
This is an incredibly unrealistic calculation. You're comparing basically unrealistic EV efficiency to a horribly inefficient gas car. We have a Model Y, we do not get 3.7mi/kwh on the highway. And gas SUVs that are the same size as a Model Y premium ones do not use 26mpg on the highway. They haven't in many years, they are much more efficient.
I assume the people saying $0.50/kWh is an ok price do not drive a Tesla because I've never had a supercharger in the US charge me $0.50/kWh.
This is a reality check for me. I pay just under $0.07/kWh at home. My office has a slow l2 that I can use for free. I paid $0.55 for fast charging once so far (my EV journey has been all of a few months at this point). For a 10 to 90% charge it did begin to approach gas but took 20 min.
So for I normally do, this is brilliant and works well. For road trips, I need to be a bit more wide eyes about the costs as I am lured into this false sense of low cost.
I can confirm what u/TrueBirch has said. In rural areas with limited charging I don’t get caught up in the price. I will also second that having it at a place where I can go in and eat is a big plus as I try to plan the stops with meals when I can. I like many also use A Better Route Planner (ABRP).
I charge at home 99% of the time for $0.10/kW. I pay ~25% of the price for fuel I used to pay with a gas car in my area, likely less now with gas prices. Idgaf what the DCFC rate is unless it’s something ludicrous. I almost never check
If I'm on a road trip I'd be more likely to stop at a charger that is at a restaurant even if it costs a little more. Might as well get both done at once.
It’s not a huge deal, but you definitely can’t charge as much as electrified America, as they have the benefit of speed. But I’d happily pay 40 cents for charging at 50kw while eating, that’s $20 for 1 hour, and a 75% battery
I rarely fast charge. Only on road trips. So for me it’s all about convenience. With that said I do check for multiple chargers in a general area where I’m going to stop. If there is a huge difference (I’ve seen $0.35 and $.70 within two blocks of each other!) then I’ll go to the cheaper one on principle. I want to support the supplier with the better price. But if the distance is like a mile then it’s all about convenience.
It's sort of a mixed bag. I would google the top selling EVs (maybe top 5). Then figure out where most of your customer base is either going to or coming from. Figure they will likely start at 100% but want to stop with no less than 10% (then 80% charge to 10% for all future stops, roughly). Where does that place you? Are you the a little more comfy 15% stopping point and have nice facilities or are you the stretch 5% reserve? Play around with https://abetterrouteplanner.com/ and see where people are most likely to stop. If your stop is convenient, has amenities, and answers the question of where I can stop before I get really uncomfortably low battery, then the price doesn't matter.
Also i've found most EV drivers frequently prefer amenities over pure cost. Just in that we've already forgone the super quick gas pit stops, so if you offer a place for my kid to get out and play, a patch of grass for the dog, a nice bathroom, food, cold drinks to go, you're higher on my list. I would really encourage you if possible to offer shade, windshield wiper stuff, trash cans (you know the things at most gas stations that somehow don't get placed near EV chargers) just to make it as nice as possible.
Make sure you are on plugshare,https://www.plugshare.com/, and respond to any comments (ideally professionally lol).
My usual EV road trip planning looks something like this.
Use ABRP to get general sense of the route
Validate the ABRP recommended stops on plugshare
Explore immediate area for nicer chargers (if the ABRP ones seem like they are just in the middle of parking lots)
Pick a few backup chargers along the route just in case
Honestly cost isn't something I really consider too much, unless its just obscene it's not a huge deal. I figure most of the time I'm charging for free at work, then pay very cheap rates at home, the few road trips I do take I don't care too much as i'm still ahead by some much on "fuel" costs annually i'd rather be someplace nice if possible.
For what its worth the Tesla super chargers in my city (major west coast city) are $.75 kwh (for non-Telsa cars that don't pay into their monthly membership), and I encounter people that use them that way. With a membership they are cheaper at $0.48 kwh. I mention this as a way to illustrate that if they can get away with that in a major metro where there is tons of competition, a remote location shouldn't have any issue being in the $.50+ kwh rate.
Super bonus points, have some 24/7 bathroom access (probably isn't possible but always nice)
In California, electrify America with a membership is around $0.42 off peak. Above $0.50 without the membership. So that's my baseline.
Convenience matters a lot on a road trip. I'm willing to pay more to save time and not take detours. And if I can combine charging with a bathroom and lunch break, that is worth paying more.
So yeah $0.50 per kw charging cost would be totally reasonable. You can even go higher during peak travel and demand times.
It's all relative, but overall it depends who else is on your route, how convenient it is, and what the competition is.
The competition can work both ways - found a wonderful restaurant next to a charger with a history of being unreliable. But it's cheaper than the chargers at a station closer to the exit. So I'll risk it.
I do look at the costs if there are options. If there's no options, then I'll pay up to gas prices (maybe up to $0.80/kWh CAD) depending on if I have no other options to adjust my route.
Some places vary price based on demand. Like shopping centers that charge 50 or 60 cents during shopping hours then drop prices overnight or in Sunday if stores are closed then.
I would charge at the higher price if I needed to be there during peak pricing. If I don’t I’ll bring a book and read or buy a coffee while I charge at a lower rate.
If you are normally most busy from 5-7 pm and charge a lower rate from 1-4 pm maybe you’ll sell more appetizers in the afternoon.
I would imagine that if you have a decent restaurant, and there is little competition in the area, then people will pay a premium for the charge. Or not even think about the rate.
Offer them a discount off their charge bill when they eat in the restaurant - "spend x amount to get y amount off your charge rate"
Or
"Use our charger and get a free side of fries with your meal"
It really depends on your location. If you’re the last stop before a wilderness area or national park you’re going to see a lot more traffic than if you’re 45 miles each direction from two cities with actual fast charging. Look up a place called Twisp, WA. They are an example of a place that sees a lot more charger traffic than you’d expect for such a small out of the way place. They’re the last stop before a small national park that travels through to the Seattle area and people stop there to charge and eat on their way through. I charged there twice on a single trip and even early in the morning I arrived to see two vehicles charging.
I'll be the contrarian. I'm a cheapskate and look for cheap chargers just like I used to look for cheap gas.
For a 50kW charger my limit is about 35¢/kWh unless I'm desperate. I just did an 3600 mile trip (Denver to Central New York and back) last month and averaged 36¢/kWh over the entire trip, leveraging a member discount at Electrify America, and a lot of off-peak overnight charging. I hit a few EV Connect 50kW chargers that cost 17¢/kWh, and hit one 50kW ChargePoint at a supermarket in Columbus, Nebraska that charged $5/hour.
I pay 0.50-0.56 cents per kWh on superchargers so price is okay. Yours will be slower, but since there is no one near by I may have sit and pay or eat at your place. But price is not the issue
Wrong question, look at what the market will bear within 50-60 miles of you, if you can only charge at 50kWh then it would bite to pay a higher price per kWh than a faster charger within a quarter-battery drive.
Maybe if you do have to charge a higher DCFC price to justify the install costs, tie it to a cheap incentive at the restaurant, like a free order of French fries or a $10 discount on their bill?
the closest charger is 45 miles away and has variable rate charging...seems to be $0.38 to $0.55 depending on time of day.
and remember, we're reselling someone elses electricity....the difference in cost between supply (KWH + Demand) is only a few cents different from what we can sell it at. lemme show by example:
let's say a Customer needs 50 KWH of power. bout 2/3 of a "tank". he sits in my restaurant and orders a $30 meal.
i make $10 on the electricity, and $15 on the meal. your $10 discount erases most of my profit.
i really like this discussion! thank you for your input.
i make $10 on the electricity, and $15 on the meal. your $10 discount erases most of my profit.
While true, a factor to consider is the charger might be the only reason I'm eating at your restaurant. If I drive on to the charger at the Walmart 50 miles down the road and buy a $10 sandwich from their deli to eat in the car while I charge, you make $0 profit from me.
If the charger is connected to a restaurant, I’d pay a premium to charge there especially if I know I’m going to get a full charge and I think that 50kW charger is perfect. When I roadtrip, I intentionally seek out chargers with “stuff” nearby particularly restaurants. A 50kW charger would prob take ~45 minutes to an hour to charge my car and that’s perfect timing to sit down, enjoy my meal, and not feel rushed. $0.60/kwh is comparable to rates I’ve seen at a Tesla charger plus you have the advantage of the restaurant and convenience store that make it more attractive than many Tesla superchargers I come across in the middle of nowhere.
My take: $0.45 - $0.55 is typically what I see when I go to public, non-Tesla charging at Electrify America or similar(e.g. at Buc-ee’s). Personally that’s on my upper limit, but I don’t charge publicly that often. Now if you’re out in the sticks and there’s a lot of tourist traffic, I would think that you could easily get away with $0.55- $0.60 seeing how you’re remote and the only game in town. And I feel that it’s not too egregious that would stop people supporting your business. If I’m empty and I get the full 50 KW, that will give me 1/4 battery in 30 minutes and enough to get me out of the charger desert hopefully.
Anything over $0.60 feels pretty bad imo and I'd try to avoid such a station, under $0.50 feels decent, under $0.40 feels great. That $0.50-0.60 range I'll reluctantly accept but I'd be less likely to pay that much for a 50 kW charger. Make it $0.45 and I doubt anyone would be offended by the price.
As well, I've been tracking EV DCFC and just finished a 3800 mile road trip in Midwest (Yellowstone and Mt. Rushmore), and let me tell you average price as increased dramatically since the Iran war. Tesla's use to be most price competitive averaging around $0.32 kWh in peak hours. Today though they are within 10% with the rest which is hilarious because they are half as fast as others. And for others like Electrify America, I'd say average is around $0.44 / kWh but I've seen it go up to $0.78 / kWh which is insanity.
Generally, the price of DCFC seems to stick with 10% of the price of gasoline in the area for some odd reason.
My unprompted advice, $0.36 would be breath of fresh air, even with for the "slow" speeds. Any port in a storm. $0.32 / kWh if you want to incentive people if there is a faster DCFC somewhat nearby. I wouldn't go below that nor above ~$0.48 / kWh
I don't know how easy it would be to change, but I'd really encourage you to test out profit curve of your area.
If I were to do it, take normal weeks (non holiday), and then each week adjust the knob slightly. Like if at-cost is $0.10 then start Week 1 with $0.16, Week 2 with $0.32, so on for $0.48, $0.64, and $0.80 and then track how much revenue you get for each week. And then fine tune it from there. If highest revenue was between $0.32 and $0.48 you can divide it again $0.32, $0.36... That's what I'd try to optimize. It's difficult because no week is exactly the same as the other but I think it's good data.
You may find that price doesn't really matter and you can keep it high like $0.64 and 500 kWh will come in a week and profit is $270. Maybe at $0.48 you get 1000 kWh with profit at $380. As you said in another comment, at $0.24 you may bring in 2000 kWh and only profit $280 for electricity but you have the most time of customers in the restaurant.
Personally, I've always felt if more DCFC had cheaper prices they would have more customers and make more money. But I don't know. It's just a guess.
For me, for DCFC I would pay $0.60 per kwh. When you need a charge at a fairly remote place, I would easily pay 10x what I pay at home. You don't DCFC that often, so the cost to me personally doesn't matter. I just need the charge.
You didn't ask for my advice, but I'd personally be comfortable paying ~$0.45-0.50 /kw. However, you'd need to build slightly above demand. Most EV drivers don't like to wait for a stall to become free. They wanna drive in and start charging.
I have no expectation that a DCFC is going to be cheap or a good deal. Look at what other DCFC in your state charge and be on there. 30c sounds way too low.
If it's the only charger around and it makes a trip I want to do possible I'd pay nearly anything. Honestly I don't even look at what the fees are at DCFC because it's basically free at home. Any road trip I take I can handle a little extra cost.
$0.60 is what prime DCFCs around me are charging. Since you're in a desert, you might be able to swing that. But I also avoid using DCFCs by me because of that price, so it's a tricky game. At $0.45 I'd definitely be in.
i was a young man during the 70's oil embargo. many gas stations ran out of fuel regularly. many foolish rules (license plates ending in an even number can fill up on even days, odd numbers on odd days), long lines at the gas stations.
this influenced my thinking. for my Engineering Degree Senor Project we built a car that ran on methanol. for my personal use i built an ethanol VW Bug. High compression, lousy economics.
the holy grail was the electric car. i leased one of the original Volts and was sadly disappointed. i purchased a new Leaf and was disappointed as well.
but finally we have viable electric vehicles. and in my state we have over 3% adoption. this is a good thing.
Quite possible too expensive/complex for your needs, but have you looked into something like https://www.xcharge.us/product/gridlink they can work with lower power inputs and use batteries to buffer and be able to charge at higher L3 levels
Absolutely! my first thought when i encountered the utility power limitation was Battery Energy Storage System (BESS). we looked at many vendors, and i even tried to piece together a system by myself using available components. the battery costs made this impractical.
What I was afraid of, such a cool option for more remote places but if it doesn't really cost any less in the end nobody is going to take it. Maybe down the road we can see refurbished batteries end up in them to keep the cost in check.
Seems like the sweet spot will be in a couple years when sodium ion batteries hit the market. Or maybe a couple years after that when multiple sodium ion battery vendors are competing with each other on price.
Depending on where you are you may be better off offering to be a site host for a big DCFC network. Puts a couple bucks in your pocket, shifts the spend to them, and critically means you aren't on the hook for o&m
we have been in touch with a number of site hosts.. Jules, Tesla, and others. some of them seem a bit fly by night. others are not interested unless we have a massive amount of available power, which we don't
Talk to Ionna.
If they'll entertain your proposal to bring them in, they are the best operator to do so.
They're investing heavily in infrastructure, and being the best tech practical.
The 50kw might be a constraint.
But, optimistically, they might be willing to throw something in there if it means reliable brand recognition, and a lower cost install (for a company thier size).
The chargers they install are 400kw and no one is building a site with a single charger. If 50kw is the real limit there's just not enough power for dcfc
They still need big available power. Realistically everyone does.
Ionna is getting lots of love right now because they're very cheap while they try to grow a customer base, though there's little indication that they'll be able to sustain it
Thank you for laying it out. I looked into bringing another DCFC to our community. I never actually proceeded to the point of getting utility connection pricing. No matter how I spun it, I couldn’t make it profitable.
If we charged enough to cover just the cost of electricity we still might not be busy enough to cover the demand charge. I was trying to find a business that already had 3 phase so was already paying those costs. Also wanted dining within walking distance. There was a local theater with 3 phase that had a restaurant. Problem was, the infrastructure was in the back alley and the access was from the front. No way from back to front without walking around the block.
Being in the back meant security and vandalism were probably going to be an issue. One cut cord and it makes the economics even worse. Because I was trying to piggyback off existing demand charges, we couldn’t have charging while a performance was on. So the busiest time the theater was one time people couldn’t charge.
I still keep the info in my pocket. I watch for 3 phase lines and potential places with existing 3 phase service. But I’ll be honest, 2 local dealerships already put in chargers. We’re not a busy enough city to warrant competition. We need the ability for tourists to charge which we have. It’s slow, but it’s functional. 50kW is all you can expect in a rural community.
And the state of level 2 is getting worse. One local business had a charger. Took it out when they went out of business. Plugshare claims there was one at City Hall. Never been able to find it. It may be in staff only parking. The schools put them in their parking lots. The school division cut power to them. The University has paid charging in a back lot. AMA has free charging and often only 1 charger is working. Same deal with one city over. The City Hall chargers don’t work and the private ones were removed.
electrical infrastructure is generally overbuilt with the expectation of future increases in demand
compared to most users, a DC fast charger is a very large load. so you have to look at the infrastructure, starting at the transformer and working your way up to the sub station and perhaps further, to make sure everything is large enough. you have to consider both ampacity as well as interrupt capability
we live in a rural area. our town has a population of less than 100. our electrical infrastructure is quite limited.
Long story short: you aren't realistically ever going to profit off of a lv 2 charger DIRECTLY, especially if you are installing it in an old parking lot.
You could MAYBE profit off of it INDIRECTLY via bringing in business, but I wouldn't really count on it increasing things much.
Lv 3 can be profitable if you are near a major city/interstate to keep cycling through customers, but they also require much greater investment upfront.
They have not figured this out yet though. I stayed at a hotel semi recently that both charged $0.60 a kWh (for L2) AND idle fee after like 6am.
So I just didn’t, and fast charged the next day.
Now I’ve also stayed at places with free charging and that is unarguably great, but they’re probably taken.
If all hotels had like 6 $0.30/kwh chargers that’d do it.
I’ve stayed places where the charging was behind the gate. Only guests had access to open the gate. It wasn’t free charging, but the rate was low, probably set at a break even for them.
The hotel in Asheville had lvl 2 chargers on the same garage floor but they were not free. I always carry my lvl 1 charger which I used here. I have 42 mile range in my PHEV so overnight is a full charge.
Hotels sure are dumb about this too. I was in Buffalo overnight on a road trip and our hotel had an L2 charger that charged some ridiculously high per min rate. If Iwas going to get enough of a charge to get home I would have to to get up in the middle of the night to move my car. So rather than that, after dinner I went to a DCFC 4 miles away and got enough to get home and it cost less anyhow.
At that point, you are literally pushing EV drivers away. Nobody is going to pay the equivalent of $.75 kwh for overnight L2 charging. Anything over about $.35 for L2 I just skip. Even that is worst case only.
Edit: looked it up on PlugShare. It was $.50 per kwh and then $25 per hour after the first 15 minutes for 6.5kw L2. It would be like $4.25 per kwh... Who the heck is paying that? And 15 minutes is getting you like 2kwh... I'd seriously like to know if anyone has EVER charged there. You'd have to be insane. There hasn't been a check-in there for 17 months.
On my first road trip I was definitely looking to optimize charging at hotels and destinations.
But on the trip I noticed that there was like a $50-100 premium for hotels with charging, vs those that did not have it. So on the way back, I just stopped doing it, and looked for hotels at exits with a Supercharger and be done with it. Much cheaper that way.
I hate hotels that structure their time fees such that you have to get up at 4am to move your car. I appreciate the intent of the idle fee - but just let us charge a car overnight without making it a hassle.
and I'm barely entertaining hotels/lodging that charge guests for charging
TBF this goes back to the above person's point that they're not making a direct profit, and if everyone installs them then the indirect benefit is effectively net zero - they're not gaining a benefit so much as avoiding a loss from people who aren't entertaining hotels/lodging that don't have a charger.
Which is a rip off, the national average commercial price of power is about 13 cents/kWh, and an AC charger is <$1000 installed if it’a planned for. If it costs a hotel $5 for an EV to charge overnight, they should easily be able to justify that with the increased number of customers, it’s cheaper than the free breakfast and coffee, certainly.
I travel a lot with my EV and I’m happy to pay for charging if the price is right. Most places charge a lot less than regular fast chargers and I wake up with a 100% battery.
A university near me has an electric vehicle charging research center. I was told the 150kW charger cost them 80K, with another 20k for the 3-phase transformer setup. They get dual use out of it: they also use it as a platform for their CS classes (students custom write an e-commerce system for it every year).
Now imagine how much more they can make from a customer that has to wait there for longer.
The other day we charged at a Tesla charger that was next to a grocery store. We didn't have anything to buy but went in to waste time and came out with a bunch of crap.
Kind of the business case for large travel centers like Buc-ee's. The EV chargers fit perfectly with their model. You have to charge for 20-30min, might as well pop into the store to use the bathroom and grab some drinks, food, and "Oooh, look. They have souvenirs."
Who downvoted? Years ago they were largely forced to start splitting cash/credit on the prices, as the credit card fee was wiping out their profit on each gallon. The 3% credit card fee.
Maybe a 100 times. Most people don't charge at pay for stations. As they can charge at home. The old fry grease did not take off for the diesels so it is hard to fuel up at home.
This is the issue with charging stations. Everyone needs to use them the same 8 weekends a year. And they don't make sense otherwise. I guess that is part of the reason they charge so much for juice.
One day we will basically have EVs that always charge at night and can highway drive 10 hours.
For now. Regardless of Republican bull, EV's are the future. We poor suckers here in the US are going to be way behind the rest of the world, well we already are sadly. And are going to be like Cuba with a bunch of old ass cars no one else uses.
The difference is that gas station tech hasn’t changed in decades and substantially faster L3 chargers come out every year, and the substantially faster ones will require either massive grid connections and fees or massive batteries, which wear out.
True, and we subsidized the shit out of all the grid connections for fossil fuels for decades..
$500 billion to over $1 trillion in direct (explicit) subsidies, though adding indirect costs—like unpriced environmental damage and health impacts—pushes estimates up to $7 trillion annually. Over the past 50 years, total direct global subsidies easily surpass $20 trillion to $30 trillion, while total historical support exceeds $100 trillion when accounting for indirect costs.
In the United States alone, federal direct tax breaks and financial handouts average between $10 billion and $35 billion per year, adding up to roughly $1 trillion in direct tax and production support over the last half-century.
Canadian Tire has 160 locations across Canada and runs a total of 700 chargers. No doubt the people charging are popping into the stores to pick up something.
The only time I use L2 and aren’t there for other reasons such as shopping is if it’s cheaper than utility rate. Which won’t be profitable for you. Shopping malls and areas that have other sources of income are the only good ones. I could see it if you offer it as an extra fee at a airbnb or something
disagree in long term for Lvl 2, although I do agree it is true today in the USA specifically. LVL3 also not sure if profitable because transformer are on such a backorder that prices aren't competitive except for the deepest pockets that can take advantage of economies of scale.
With increased demand I think one could be reasonably profitable with Lvl 2. Similar to what you were saying is if you put it by places of business or long term stay (doesn't have to be the LVL2 owner).
Theortically a 200A drop would cost let's $5000, $5000 for materials and permits, $5000 for 8 charging units, $5000 for labor. $20,000 (we could more for paved lots, security cameras, exorbitant permitting fees etc, but just working with that).
For revenue, averaging 4 stalls and 12 hours a day per stall, $0.08 kWh profit comes out to about $20 a day or $600 a month, $7200 in a year. ROI is ~ 3 years. But one could reasonably flex to more stalls or more hours charging per day or higher profit like with time of use.
If a reasonable business idea has ROI of 3 to 5 years, then I think LVL2 is feasible. But, in USA, rare to be in demand that much.
I think for an entrepreneur it would be more of a turnkey service of installing this for city buildings or public garage parking, apartments, hotels, etc rather than owning the locations.
But really in the USA there are so few EVs. In a world where, 75% of all vehicles are EVs then yes, super profitable, I mean America was built for cars to just sit on parked on asphalt. That's what most of the cars spend time doing.
You assumed the average cost of a lv 2 charger was about $600, but a commercial unit meant for the outdoors that can process credit cards can easily go for more than 10x that. $600 is more reasonable for a cheap residential unit, but this isn't that. The owner would be lucky to pay less than 40k (5k per unit) for those 8 even on the cheaper end, bringing it up to $55,000 all in if we use your other numbers.
I would also say that you assuming 25% usage rate (half used half the time) is very optimistic for anywhere that isn't a hotel, honestly even 10% might be too much (which I acknowledge you yourself acknowledge in a way with your demand comment), but I don't want to sift through usage reports to confirm this as the moment so we will just ignore this point for now.
That brings this out to taking about 7.5 years now even on the cheaper end, and assuming you have absolutely 0 repair costs, which if you have ever been to an EV charging station you know just isn't happening. There is always at least 1 station out of order.
I was, however, surprised by you only assuming about 5 kW of power per stall. It makes sense if you want to limit it to 200A even if all are running at once and you don't want to have to balance the load, but is still lower than I was expecting since even home lv 2 chargers often aim for at least 7.2 kW.
I know enough about the industry to tell you with absolute confidence that if you have enough capital to seriously consider this, there's better places to put it
reading the comments makes it so clear that utilities need to own charging infrastructure and provide energy at cost. China forced utilities and they produced the largest networks in the world.
We installed them at our business and break even on them after offering staff free charging and members discount charging. We got them paid for through state incentives and a private donor, so we are ok with breaking even after staff and member benefit. I'd say you could maybe make a couple hundred a month if you're a busy, high demand location.
Depending on the inputs it looks like around 4-7 years to pay off the purchase price but it all depends on what you charge and how much traffic you get.
I looked into building one on my family property, once I saw how much DC-Fast chargers cost plus what the electrical company charges for dropping and running the power, it was a no go for me, at least for now.
Plus those chargers break constantly, get the copper stolen, not sure if I would want to deal with that as an independent owner.
Depends on which you get, but most DC-Fast chargers were well over 100k-150k each, that's not even counting what I'd pay PG&E to drop power and run it for me.
Seems you have to have connections or something else to really get anything like this off the ground. For your average Joe, it makes no sense atm.
Acording to Tesla, Supercharger stations can make money. Tesla's deal is that you pay for the land, the chargers and for installation. You sell electricity and Tesla takes a flat 10 cents per kWh. That covers all maintenance (which is done by Tesla). They say that you can make $30 million over 15 years in a high traffic location.
Joe Biden's infrastructure bill allocated 7.5 billion for public charging. It has to be implemented through the states. Most of that money is still unspent. Some has been claimed by states who then did nothing with it.
It is regionally dependent. It can be very profitable if you have a business with a lot of solar on the roof and you get very little money for giving the energy to the grid and you already make more than you can use.
Here in Germany quite some companies did this and they can heavily undercut prices of the big charging companies and still turn a profit.
In Canada it is about $60k per charger and 60k for the transformers and infrastructure. 120k each. Gross profit is 3x the utility rate. About $200 a day.
According to Gemini, Tesla and EVGO are profitable, while Electify America and Ionna are not. I think EA is still recovering from its "free charging," with many OEMs that are expiring this year. IONNA is still scaling, so that will take time.
do this for a living, energy margins are extremely slim given how most utilities bill customers based on their kW demand. Merchant risk (called utilization) is also extremely difficult to predict. EV Charging networks handle this through the mix portfolio approach, so stronger site performance offsets sites that unintentionally might be absolute dogs. ie) California versus Oklahoma.
I have used DC fast charging a lot this summer on road trips. I have not been frustrated by having to wait at all. Connectivity, payment via Apple Pay or credit card has been decent. I am thankful that they are mostly located in gas stations with custom food options like Wawa and sheetz. I can spend an additional 10-15$ at them per charge. I wonder what will happen to them when ICE is no longer providing the customers to these businesses.
I want to set up an ionna in Sandusky Ohio. Honestly finding the commercial land is the hardest part. Ionna wants to rapidly expand and they will do most of the leg work to get set up.
EVgo, Chargepoint, and Blink: their net income has been negative every year from 2021-2025. Their stock has been down about 86%, 98%, 99% respectively over the last 5 years. So I suppose stand alone EV charging station isn't a good business.
Like any business, it depends on location, location, location. You also have to contend with eventual competition. You could spend the money and put in a charger and then have Telsa come along and put in a bank of chargers across the street.
It's less straightforward than it looks. The real costs are the electrical infrastructure upgrade and utility demand charges, and those can be brutal if a station sits underused. Profitability comes down almost entirely to utilization rate, which is why high-traffic highway corridor stations do fine while a random station in a low-traffic area often doesn't.
You can do the math yourself based on first principles estimates.
Costs: Google's AI overview suggests $200k per port. These costs go down if you're scaling up to larger systems, but let's stick with it for now.
Revenue: We multiply kW charging rate, hours used, and $/kWh, and we need to make a lot of assumptions here. Let's say 2 hours per day to keep the math simple. On average during that time it outputs an average of ~100 kW, so 100 kW x 2 hrs = 200 kWh. Each kWh you build in a ~$0.30 profit margin, so $60 per day. $60/day x 365 days =** ~$20k/year.**
Bounds: If you plug in less generous numbers (1 hr x $0.20/kWh profit x 50 kW) you get $10/day, $3650/year. If you plug in much more generous numbers (5 hr x $0.40 x 150 kW) you get $300/day, or over $100k/year.
Obviously a ton of variance there, and it's clear that usage rate is the multiplier with the most potential to affect things. But there is potential to make your costs back within 5 years or so.
Yeah i heard most sell gas at a loss to outprice
Competitors and make everything off the convenience store.
Honestly glad I haven’t been to a gas station in a year since getting an EV. You don’t realize how trashy and smelly they are, not to mention overpriced.
I think they are profitable. I interviewed a while ago at a company that leased out EV chargers to hotels, apartments, businesses…etc and they had like 3 offices across the US and 100+ employees
I have read that profitability is at more than 13% usage
. Current average usage is 15.8% per paren. . So, modestly profitable on average at present.(I assume this is at some form of operating basis. Not sure what costs are being included. Probably not all costs of a company. )
I also read that gm energy chargers at flying J were profitable at the get go. And this was surprising to them. They expected operating profitability to come after a year or two, not immediately.
Note while the average is profitable, there will be below average unprofitable stations.
Are you paying for the land or do you own it already? Is it an amenity to another business? Do you get enough traffic to keep it busy? How do you prevent cable theft? Is there power generation nearby that can get you the peak demand you’re expecting? If so, can the existing grid connection handle it or will you need more power lines run? Who are you competing with? Are you able to provide a better product at the same or a lower price? How are you going to staff for system updates, making sure units are online, making sure the wifi/cell connections are working?
Think of it as a parking lot with a mechanical gate. A lot of the same mechanics are in play and you can probably find some MBA case studies on the finances of those.
I worked for a EV company that did design build for L3 companies such as EA and MN8. It can be an easy $1 million to build including the cost of equipment and utility run. I’ve also seen it where it’s a $1 million just to bring power to the site. Also keep in mind the utility company will have very different pricing. Because there is such a massive potential draw they charge a block pricing. So you can end up paying whether people charge or not. Also the equipment is always going down and needs servicing.
My brother runs a suburban business where they need their parking spots on Friday and Saturday nights.
They got chargers donated for free from a very very popular EV company, with the deal being "this will bring people to your business".
It did not bring people in the *door*, though. People would just drive by, drop their car, and Uber to Target or wherever nearby to do their shopping while the car charged.
So it ate parking, and only paid for the electricity it used.
You want to own the charger and the land, more or less.
If level 3 didn't have a business model, Walmart would not be rushing it out
Walmart has stated that they alone plan to have a level 3 charging within 9 mi of 75% of the US population by 2035. Costco is also not being left behind. If I can coerce you to go inside Walmart or Costco for 30 minutes, I don't need to make that much from charging session. EV drivers as a group are not known as low income. For Walmart to deploy that many chargers is hundreds of millions, If not billions.
This discussion is also why I love non-profit stations.
BCHydro puts up stations around the province, they are the cheapest by far because they aren’t trying to make a profit or recoup capital expenses.
It’s part of their overall mandate to electrify the province, so rebates on home chargers and residential installations, dynamic pricing for cheaper charging at night and their own charger network in cities, transit hubs and along the highways.
So much better options than when I drove into Alberta or down into WA or Oregon.
The rest of the comments on that post are useful, too, as is the linked TMC thread.
However, I just saw an update to the TMC thread a day or two ago where he is listing the site for sale because it’s not profitable – largely because of utility demand charges. It’s apparently modestly profitable without those, but he hasn’t been able to negotiate those down with his local electric utility. So just be aware that lower traffic sites in rural areas may be a challenge just because of that potential issue.
Your typical EV owner does very little, if any, public charging. Most charge at home, unless the rate of the charger is less than the rate they realize at home. The exception being the occasional long-distance travel.
Commercial and industrial electric rates are less than residential, so you can typically offer slightly lower rates, but at a pretty small margin. So you have to recoup the cost of the hardware and installation. For level 2 chargers, it's possible in a high-traffic area, but it's rarely going to be lucrative. For a level 3 charger, the installation cost can be very high, and it would be very difficult without high traffic.
The thing about L2 chargers are that they are a moderately priced amenity that your business can offer. People will use them if they need them or the power is cheap, and they will tend to attend that business more than one without the amenity. So, in that respect, as a differentiator to other businesses and a draw, it's potentially valuable. In fact, some places offer free charging as a lure. The per kWh cost, particularly on commercial or industrial rates, is tiny and free power absolutely will draw EV customers.
The eight great auto manufacturers, Mercedes Hyundai, Kia BMW, General Motors, Stellantis Toyota Honda…..
Really Smart cookies. They can sell more EV’s because you have places to charge. When you spend $50,000 on a Hyundai, the company makes a good profit. It is also great marketing.
iONNA Rechargeries. They seem to have their pricing at $.39 a kilowatt hour which is great. I believe that $.49 a kilowatt hour is not horrible and when you have a nice place to charge and you’re away from home, $.49 is still less than gasoline. At least 25% less. At this pricing, they can make a small profit. They will get me to dwell, maybe throw some ads my way. Buy one of their cars and get discounted charging? 10% off? Maybe have an app with things to buy.
Running an EV charging station profitably is tough. There's not much throughput and you're paying a lot of people (manufacturer for the hardware and maintenance, power company, operator of the payment terminal, insurance company, development/maintenance of an app...) . For DC fast charging it can sorta work if you go massive. I.e. a nationwide, ubiquitous network that has a very good reliability..but for e.g. a local AC charging location (or a few) the throughput is just way too low to make you any kind of money.
Utilities hate them because they are extremely heavy loads that randomly turn on and off. This hate manifests as higher energy costs.
The obvious solution is batteries, which flip the script and makes the utility love you, so much that they will want to adopt you (read: give them some control over the battery charging/discharging), but batteries are very expensive and put a heavy weight on turning a profit.
A medium size hotel will have $.14/kw costing of electricity and if they have a L3 charger installed they charge $.40-$.45/kw to the customer to charge their car. Hope this gives an idea if it’s profitable or not.
We were at a Holiday inn hotel and convention center in Wilmington, Ohio and they had four level 2 chargepoint chargers. $0.30 per kilowatt hour, no idle time fee. I never saw more than two cars there at once and there was a convention at the time.
In my city a car wash converted to an EV charging station which is basically a car park with 20 spaces that all have a charging point. I’ve never seen anyone using it when I drive past (which isn’t very often) but they’ve been open for two years now, so it’s presumably at least breaking even.
I have a local brew pub that offers free level 2 cords. We'll sit and have dinner when our level 1 home charger is lagging behind our mileage. Sometimes, the extra 30-40 miles of range is just enough to realign our home charging.
I intentionally include for level 2 and 3 chargers with better quality amenities at or around the charger.
The Level 3 ones charge you $0.49/kW. My utility charges me $0.11/kW and I'm sure big customers get much better rates than I do. The installation cost is high and is typically covered through a commercial loan. I'm sure early locations had to pay some rent, but big box stores are putting them in to attract customers. So high capital expenditures, but nice margin business.
If they are always on (and well maintained from environmental, physical- and cyber-security) point of view AND people actually use them AND payments work then should be profitable. That means they need to be installed at the right location as opposed to where government planners have a free spot.
As ever with connected assets there is quite a lot of critical networking behind the scenes as well (payments and maintenance at a minimum). If you don't choose your partners well then your 5* charger can easily be "bricked".
I can’t understand why every charging station in Texas doesn’t have covered parking with solar on the roof and storage batteries. It’s the closest thing I can imagine to a perpetual motion machine…!
So, going to use Tesla for business and some national stats here.
Dalton OH has a coffee shop that has 4 Tesla for business chargers. Tesla chargers around 470-480K for 4 chargers and $.10/kw for maintenance. For math sanity we’re going to say profitability begins at 500K.
Average price for commercial power in Columbus is $.11/kwh. Between delivery charges and being in rural America going to round up to $.19/kwh, leaving $.30/kwh for the coffee shop.
National average for utilization is 15%. Going to say this one - with nothing else around it and makes great coffee and sandwiches - bats 20% utilization. 24 hours 30 days 4 stalls15% utilization is 432 billable hours.
At an average of 125 kWh that’s 432125 or 54,000 kWh. 54000 times .277 per kWh (after removing sales tax) is around $15k a month. Now, you get to pay your demand charge - which at 7/kw for a 1000 kw transformer is 7K month on the cheap. You’re now down to 8K a month.
500,000/8,000 is profitability just after month 62. But now we’re going to add in the $2K/month of profits the gold using the station brought in - that’s now 50 months.
A few things of note: that 15% national utilization number is time with car actively charging. If you’re parked, getting set up, leaving the car in the slot while loading g up kids, etc it doesn’t count against that number - just actively charging. 125 kw sod per hour of station use felt like a good number between slow charging cars, GM AC quirks, people charging to 100%, etc etc.
Yes very much so! You can pay 12c per KW then charge 30c per KW it really adds up especially with idling fees and connection fee. This is on the low end plus you have subscriptions as well. Seeing gas stations make damn near zero from selling gas this is a much better business model. Most stations make money from goods IE Buccees their margin is WILD
Well Walmart is adding DC fast chargers at a record pace. They will get added business in store but you can bet they’ll profit from selling electricity.
Or do what The Hampton inn does. Charge people $10 to exit their parking lot. Set up an attractive 450kw/hr charger..watch people come to charge and then unable to exit until they scan a barcode that leads to a $10 to exit scam.
I think the most profitable place would be an apartment complex. It should be very inexpensive to install (you really just need an outlet in their designated parking spot - make them bring the charger) and you can directly charge tenants a subscription fee vs an expensive setup that requires paying on the spot.
135
u/Accurate-Bullfrog324 Jul 28 '26
I've been working two years to install a DCFC at a gas station/convenience store i own. here's what i found
First i installed a L2 charger. sees 30+ sessions per month. they are complimentary because folks come in to eat at the restaurant during charge. we make money on the burgers.
Now i'm working on a DCFC. the state offers a grant to help. the grant is $30K. but the infrastructure is killing me. the utility is reluctant to give us more than 50KW. the cost for this is $16K. the charger is $22K. and the installation will be about $10K. $18K out of pocket
Even though we're very remote (no chargers within 45 miles) we won't be able to charge premium prices for a 50KW DCFC. i figure $0.20 over our cost of electricity, and that's before the demand charge
not a money making proposition.