Charging stations for EVs get minimal use

 Forbes:

Electrify America reported they conducted 1.45 million charging sessions in 2021. They announce that with pride, but it’s worth noting that they had around 3,500 charging stalls at the end of 2021, and around 2,300 at the start, for an average of just under 3,000. So that works out to a rough average of around 1.25 charging sessions a day per stall, a shockingly low number. They began the year with just 0.5 sessions per day and grew to the larger number by the end of the year.

Of course, as an average, some stalls would see far more and some less, and they would see more on some days and less on others. As such many stalls would not see use on many days, while others might get a line at certain times.

EA charges 31 cents/kWh if you pay their $4/month membership fee, and 43 cents otherwise in most locations.

According to EA, they distributed 41 gigawatt-hours in 2021 in this 1.45 million sessions, for an average session of around 28 kWh — which amounts to 80 to 120 miles of range per session, much less than the capacity of most modern cars. In addition, even if they earned the full 43 cents for each kWh, this implies revenue of around 17 million dollars. At the USA average price of 13 cents/kWh this suggests roughly 12M of gross margin.

These small numbers are surprising because Electrify America is the largest of the non-Tesla charging network (though a fairly distant 2nd to Tesla.) It’s unlikely any of the others are doing much better. The number is certainly not enough to support the cost of a charging station, though today that cost is handled by government subsidies, and particularly in the case of EA, due to the large penalty VW had to pay over the dieselgate scandal, which is what got EA started. Based on data from subsidy applications in California and Texas, installation costs anywhere from $100,000 to $200,000 per stall, while Tesla manages a much lower price.
...

This does not look like a profitable business at this point. 

See, also:

Electric vehicle owner learns replacing a tail light costs over $4,000

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare