Selling electric vehicle charging services cannot be a financially viable business

Confused?

Yes, I mean it. Selling Electric vehicle Charging services cannot be a financially viable business opportunity and need more!

To understand more, let’s go into details about the Charging solutions. A study on EV infrastructure in the USA says 60~80% of electric vehicle owners use home chargers who charge overnight, 30~40% use workplace charging stations and 3~4% use public charging stations. So, this share of 3~4% compared to the home charging is very low and we are now talking about the business solutions and financial feasibilities for public charging. With the advent of electric vehicle market and many nations are concentrating of a complete switchover to EVs by 2030 giving a positive hope to the EV infrastructure market but we need to talk some realities of this business opportunity and how this business can be reorganized and make profitable so that every entrepreneur can show interest in it.

If we talk about business feasibility we must talk about the investment scale first. Building an electric vehicle charging stations network need land, both AC and DC High voltage grid power, charging stations equipped with global standard connectors, safety and security measures, mobile app and electronic payment options which means it needs a safe and secure financial transaction and last but not the least, need a distributed infrastructure all along the road network in any nation. Now we can estimate of the scale of investment needed and sure proves that electric vehicle charging services alone cannot be a financially viable business but an indirect value partnerships with private firms who are getting benefitted due to this infrastructure development will lead to a financially viable business model.

What is Indirect value Partnerships? 

let us go detailed into indirect beneficiaries due to the EV charging infrastructure growth. The below are some of the listed sectors who are indirectly getting benefitted due to increase in the EV charging stations.

1. Electric power supplier companies for supplying AC / DC / HVDC Power for normal and fast charging get benefitted by the increase in the power utilization.

   

2. Automobile & Electric vehicle companies and component manufacturers get benefitted by the increase in their business because of the customer acceptance of this market because EV charging stations solve the issue of limited drive range per charge.
3. Retail stores who get increased foot traffic to their stores while charging been done
4. Financial institutions for using their payment services
5. Banner and display advertising on the charging stations and charging hubs

Hence it is important that an electric vehicle charging infrastructure company should work together with the above stakeholders while setting up their stations, work out a financial buying model keeping their future earning potential due to the infrastructure setup.  This decreases the initial investment many folds as the initial investment is shared by the various indirect beneficiary industries. As the investment of the business initiator is reduced, it will become a financially viable solution and also value adding to the stakeholders who have given their initial support.

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Note: The article is totally my own thoughts and not necessarily anyone needs to agree with my thoughts and ideas.

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