EV charger companies switch tactics in search for elusive profits

Charging companies are still working out how to position themselves in the market as they struggle to achieve profitability. “It's very hard to make money in the business of providing plugs,” said Andy Palmer, the former Aston Martin CEO now leading PodPoint. PodPoint – which is majority owned by France’s EDF Energy – recently made the decision to move away from fast chargers in public locations to concentrate on home and workplace charging. It's now targeting positive free cashflow (one measure of financial health) by 2027 as it works out how to successfully exist in a market that sits at the often chaotic intersection of lumpy EV demand, sporadic government support, planning red tape, restricted grid access and volatile energy pricing. “We see the need to specialise,” Palmer said. “If you're going to do it well, you can't be all things to all men.” The charging industry encompasses a range of business models: making the physical chargers, installing them, operating them and unifying networks under one brand to sell subscriptions or sign up corporate customers. Companies can combine any number of these business models, but most highly prized by investors are more integrated charging businesses like Chargepoint and Tesla, according to the consultancy Bain. Pure hardware providers are less popular, because the markets believe that increased competition will turn them into lower-margin commodity businesses. Those investors are getting impatient. “The costs are burdened by private investors mostly, and when you talk about private investors, you talk about returns,” said Vittorio Carelli, transportation infrastructure credit analyst at Fitch Ratings. “We don’t have a view on anyone right now who is in a cashflow-positive situation.” The pitch to investors has largely been based on the Amazon model: invest now to reap returns in the long term. Behind that bullishness is the certainty that the vehicle market will move to electric propulsion in the UK and across Europe. Analysts at the bank Jefferies, for example, predict that legislation will help push EV sales across Europe to 9.3 million by 2030. Although car makers such as Toyota and Stellantis are pushing multi-pathway approaches to achieving zero carbon emissions by 2035, only battery power has so far really proven that it can achieve that goal. But with even a medium-term goal of profitability looking shaky, investors are becoming spooked. “There’s no money if the infrastructure doesn't provide sufficient return,” said Carelli. Charging companies benefited from the same flood of investor cash as other EV-related industries in recent years, and those investors were willing to play the long-game while money was cheap. With rising interest rates, however, pressure is being applied to the charging companies to shape up or face being swallowed up. “As investors’ risk appetite is lowered, a wave of consolidation is likely to happen,” said Alex Metz, Paris director for the green mobility arm of consultancy Apricum. Metz cited Shell’s purchase of Volta Charging in January for $170 million – nearly $95m below its peak valuation after listing via the quick-and-easy spac method in 2021. The UK charging market is “over-contested” with 25-30 key players, according to a July report by the property company Savills. “Some of the early pioneers are now running out of capital,” it said. It mentioned no names, but those suffering from persistent losses include Instavolt. The company lost £95.6m on revenue of £19m in the year ending 31 March, it said, while also calling it “its strongest year to-date”. Instavolt was bought last year by EQT, a Swedish-based investment group. Rolling out a network is costly and time-consuming. A hub of around 8-12 rapid chargers costs around £400,00-£500,000 to install, according to the Savills report, with more money needed to be paid to the Distribution Network Operator (DNO) if the grid needs an upgrade. It gets worse the more remote those connections are. The UK government has been promising since 2020 that it will sink £1 billion to help fund expensive grid connections to more out-of-the-way locations on major road routes, but it has only just announced the first £70m. Within the EU, charging companies are facing similar issues. Industry group ChargeUp Europe has complained that the timeframe for setting a rapid charging hub has risen from six months to two years as the red tape worsens. “It's Kafka meets the energy transition,” Lucie Mattera, secretary general of ChargeUp, told Reuters. Where to locate rapid chargers is also an issue. “There’s a lack of historical data to understand if a charge point will provide enough return,” Carelli said. “We have a sense that primary locations such as shopping centres and high-speed road networks might be a good location, but we don’t have a clear view if downtown is of interest.” One of the selling points for Dutch charger operator Allego is software it developed that it says calculates where the best locations are. With that intelligence, you can build sites safe in the knowledge that you can look forward to a steady stream of drivers, while (you’d hope) avoiding queues. Utilisation rates are still low, however. Allego said on its company’s recent earnings call that utilisation on its existing ‘ultra-fast’ network was up to 15% in the third quarter of the year, up from 12.1% for the same period in 2022. As more EVs arrive and users identify pain points in the charging process, operators are being forced to improve that process, sometimes at a cost to themselves. Palmer cites the UK government’s demand to retrofit bank-card readers to chargers to avoid the need for app membership or dedicated cards. “I don't know any other industry where legislation is applied retrospectively,” he said. As charger operators look for ways to better streamline their business, new opportunities are emerging. For example, PodPoint is leveraging the knowledge of EDF to "flex" charging times when the car is connected at home to smooth out electricity demand. “There's a model there that allows you to be more profitable so you can share that profitability with the consumer,” Palmer said. After that comes bi-directional charging, which, depending on whether the car is smart enough to allow it, extracts electricity to sell back to the grid to the benefit of both parties. “It's a much more compelling proposition,” Palmer said. This energy flex could generate £40,000-£50,000 of recurring revenue per participating customer for PodPoint, the company believes. Other potential revenues include advertising via screens on the chargers – an avenue being explored by Greek charger network Eneres. PodPoint's Tesco chargers also use advertising screens. As the likes of Instavolt create more charging ‘hubs’ with amenities such as cafés, they can also generate the same income stream enjoyed by fuel stations the world over. With rapid charging rates approaching parity with petrol and diesel however, the model is in danger of repelling those potential EV buyers who the industry needs to follow the early adopters, identified by Palmer as the “60% in the middle who want a value proposition”. High energy prices will give operators very little space to squeeze EV drivers further to achieve their goal of profitability.