• What you sell
• Hardware
• Revenue
• Costs
• Demand charges
• Ownership models
• Incentives
• Reliability
• How sites fail
• Glossary

What you are actually selling

Drivers think they're buying electricity. They're buying time. A DC fast charger sells thirty minutes back to someone halfway through a road trip. A Level 2 charger at a hotel sells a full battery by breakfast. Price and position the site around the time, not the kWh.

The business, meanwhile, runs on one number: sessions per port per day. Nearly every cost is fixed (hardware, construction, software, maintenance, demand charges) and nearly every dollar of revenue is variable. Low utilization doesn't mean low profit. It means real losses, because the fixed costs show up whether anyone plugs in or not.

Almost everything else in this business is a way of moving that one number, and the biggest lever on it by far is the address.

The hardware, in one pass

Match the charger to the dwell time. A 350 kW charger at an apartment complex is a monument to someone else's budget. A 7 kW charger at an interstate exit is a customer service incident.

Connectors: North America is moving from CCS1 to NACS, standardized as SAE J3400. New DC sites should plan for J3400, and most networks keep CCS1 alongside it through the transition. Level 2 uses J1772 or J3400.

A port is a connector that can charge a car at the same time as the others. A charger (or dispenser) may have one or two ports, and some split power between them. When you compare quotes, count ports and simultaneous power, not boxes.

Where the money comes from

• Energy sales, priced per kWh where state weights and measures rules allow it (most now do), otherwise per minute or per session.
• Idle fees for cars that finish charging and keep the spot. Less about revenue, more about turnover.
• Session fees, memberships, and subscription pricing.
• Fleet contracts. One delivery fleet committed to overnight charging is worth more than a hundred random drivers.
• Environmental credits, such as Low Carbon Fuel Standard credits in California, Oregon, and Washington. Real money, volatile price.
• Indirect value to the host: dwell time, foot traffic, room nights, tenant retention. This is often the actual reason a host says yes.

Where the money goes

Up front

• Hardware. The line item everyone negotiates hardest and the one that matters least by the end.
• Make-ready: trenching, conduit, switchgear, panels, pads, bollards, signage, accessible stalls. Where estimates go to die. Estimate yours.
• Utility service upgrades, such as a new transformer or a new service. Can cost more than the chargers and take a year or longer to schedule.
• Design, engineering, permitting, and commissioning.

Every month

• Electricity: energy charges plus demand charges. See below, and bring a drink.
• Network software and connectivity, usually priced per port per year.
• Maintenance and warranty. Budget for it on day one, because the chargers will not ask permission to break.
• Payment processing, host revenue share or lease, and insurance.

Demand charges, the silent killer

Most commercial electric bills have two parts. Energy is billed per kWh used. Demand is billed per kW of the highest power draw in the month, usually measured over a 15 minute window. A 150 kW charger that runs flat out for fifteen minutes, once, sets that month's demand at 150 kW.

At $15 per kW, that is $2,250 before you've sold much of anything. Spread across one 30 kWh session, the electricity cost you about $75 per kWh. Spread across 600 sessions, it's closer to $0.25. Same charger, same tariff, different business.

Ways to fight it

• EV-specific rate schedules. Many utilities now offer them, often with reduced or phased-in demand charges.
• Power management: capping site power or sharing it across ports so the peak stays lower.
• Battery storage to shave peaks. It works, but it's a second project with its own capex.
• Right-sizing. Building for the traffic you'll have in year five means paying demand on it in year one. Build the conduit for later, energize for now.

Who owns what

The question that picks the model: who is better positioned to survive a slow first three years? Whoever that is should own the utilization risk, and get paid for it.

Incentives, as of fall 2026

• The federal 30C tax credit is done for new projects. It doesn't apply to property placed in service after June 30, 2026.
• NEVI, the federal highway charging formula program, was paused and reissued under new guidance in 2025. The money flows through state DOTs, each on its own schedule. Ask yours directly.
• Utility make-ready programs are often the best money left, because they pay for the expensive part.
• State grants and rebates vary widely. The AFDC laws and incentives database and DSIRE are the fastest way to see what applies.
• Grants are free money with a price: reporting, uptime requirements, and wage rules. Price the strings before you celebrate.

Reliability is revenue

A broken charger is worse than no charger. It costs you the session, the review, and the driver's willingness to try you again. NEVI-funded ports have to hold 97% uptime, which is a reasonable bar for anyone.

• Know who fixes it and how fast, in writing, before commissioning.
• Stock spares for the parts that actually fail: cables, connectors, payment readers, power modules, communication boards.
• Parts shipped from overseas bring lead times and customs paperwork. A two-week repair becomes a two-month one without stock on the shelf.
• Monitor successful sessions, not just online status. A charger can report online all day and fail every session.

How sites fail

• Picked for the land deal, not the traffic.
• Make-ready and utility work estimated at a fraction of what they cost.
• Demand charges modeled as an afterthought, or not at all.
• Nobody owns maintenance.
• Priced below the all-in cost of a kWh because the competitor down the road did it first.
• Built for 2032 traffic in 2026.

Glossary

AADT

Annual average daily traffic. Vehicles passing a point on a road on an average day. State DOTs publish it.

CPO

Charge point operator. The company that runs the chargers and usually owns the relationship with the driver.

EVSE

Electric vehicle supply equipment. The charger.

eMSP

E-mobility service provider. An app or network that lets drivers start and pay for sessions on chargers it doesn't own.

OCPP

Open Charge Point Protocol. How chargers talk to back-end software. Insist on it, so you can change software vendors without changing hardware.

OCPI

Open Charge Point Interface. How networks talk to each other for roaming.

kW and kWh

kW is power, how fast. kWh is energy, how much. Demand charges bill kW. Drivers buy kWh. Most bad pro formas confuse the two once.

Make-ready

Everything electrical and civil up to the charger itself.

Utilization

Share of time a port is in use, or sessions per port per day. This site uses both.

Dwell time

How long the car is parked. Pick the charger speed to match it.

NACS, J3400, CCS1

Connector standards. NACS was standardized as SAE J3400 and is becoming the default in North America. CCS1 is the incumbent.