The worst loan offer I got for a charging site was about 22% interest on a two-year term. On top of that, they wanted 50% or more down, plus collateral. My house, among other things.
That's the extreme. What I usually see runs from about 12% on the low side to about 20% on the high side. The low side comes with a personal guarantee. The high side comes without one, but you still need some existing lienable asset, like cash flow from another business, before anyone will write the loan. You seldom see money lent to individuals for charging stations, especially people without an established business or a line of credit.
Why lenders treat charging as high risk
It comes down to merchant risk. You can forecast the cash flow and make it look rosy. The reality is that charging is still an early business. It isn't proven from a cash-flow standpoint the way a gas station, a convenience store or an existing McDonald's is.
For a public site, nobody can guarantee the utilization, so in the eyes of a lender the risk is close to infinite. Nobody has figured out how to calm a lender down about that on the public side. Fleet charging is different. A depot can reduce merchant risk with contracts for utilization. A public charger on a corner can't.
The horror stories are about business lending, not charging
I think a lot of the horror stories about people not getting financing come from people who don't understand how business financing works.
The hotel, the Dunkin' Donuts and the Taco Bell you drive past that were financed through an SBA program all required someone to put up their own capital and personally guarantee the loan. That's the rule, not a special punishment for charging. Under the SBA's own regulations, anyone holding 20% or more of the business generally has to guarantee the loan. What lenders ask of a charging station isn't any different.
The difference is the comparables. A Taco Bell can't guarantee its sales any more than a charger can guarantee its utilization. But there's enough volume and demand out there, and enough data from franchisees that were already financed and are showing success, that a lender can reasonably assume it. Charging doesn't have that pile of comparables yet.
SBA works if you show up as a business
I've seen a lot of success with SBA loans for charging. But you have to frame it as a business. You need comparables. And you still need skin in the game: some personal liquidity, and some of your own business capital up front.
SBA is a great way to get hotels and assets like that up and running, and charging is one of those assets. It just isn't a way around putting your own money in.
Or skip the bank entirely
Dutch operator Fastned found another way. It pays for part of its build with five-year retail bonds sold to its own customers at 6%, about €337 million raised by June (electrive). Its stations are bringing in about €395,000 a year each so far in 2026 (Renewable Energy Magazine). I covered the quarter in an October roundup.
If you've ever put down a deposit to reserve a Rivian or a Lucid, or backed something on Kickstarter, you've already lent a company money, at 0%. Fastned pays its drivers 6%. Paying 6% to build a revenue-producing asset is pretty good. Compared with the 12 to 22% above, especially with inflation where it is, 6% is golden.
It also changes who carries the merchant risk. When the driver is the lender, the lender is also the user. That takes a lot of the fear out of it, and it lets the operator set the terms instead of the bank.
Would it work in the US? Maybe. It's crowdfunding, and there are compliance challenges to work out before anyone makes it routine here. But I applaud it, and if Fastned keeps working, I expect this kind of creative financing to show up elsewhere.
What I'd do
- Plan on putting in your own capital and signing a personal guarantee. Every franchise owner did.
- Bring comparables, not just a forecast. A rosy pro forma isn't proof.
- Go to an SBA lender first, and pitch the site as a business, not a science project.
- If you run a fleet depot, use utilization contracts to take merchant risk off the table.
The financing guide covers the main routes, and the SBA loan calculator takes your own numbers. For comparables, start with the benchmarks page.
