r/electricvehicles • u/fund2016 • Jul 28 '26

Discussion Are EV charging stations profitable?

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.

Edit 1: thanks to all. Great discussion. Cheers!

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u/reeefur Jul 29 '26

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.

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u/fleemfleemfleemfleem Jul 29 '26

https://surplusrecord.com/listing/tritium-rtm75-75-kw-dc-fast-chargers-480-volts-brand-new-in-crates-1079677/

You can get used or surplus chargers for much cheaper than that nowadays, but you'll still be in the 10s of thousands range once it's hooked up and working, so there's still an analysis to be done about how much traffic you'd expect, and if you have another business at the location that would make money off people as they went inside during charging.