What is the business case for public electric vehicle chargers?

Abstract Electric vehicle charging infrastructure is currently heavily subsidized in the United States at the local, state, and federal levels. However, the future success and growth of charging infrastructure to meet future EV demand will likely require chargers to become a sustainable business independent of government intervention. In this study, we examine the business case of electric vehicle chargers, focusing specifically on DC fast chargers. Our analysis employs empirical datasets, with rate plans down to the charging plug level and utilization data representing several major charging networks with over 5 million individual charging events across 1,300 DC fast chargers in California. We find that for charging rates based on energy [$/kWh] or a combination of energy and time [$/kWh and $/hr], customers pay an average of about $0.124/mi and $0.129/mi respectively. Rates based solely on time (dominated by the Tesla Supercharger network) is substantially cheaper at $0.084/mi. However, when coupling these findings with utilization data and comparing it to costs associated with charger deployment, we find that the revenues are nowhere near being able to payback the capital and operating costs of the cheapest DC fast chargers observed in the literature in a three-year period—even when doubling the average number of events and amount of energy dispensed to charge vehicles. Despite these challenges, we also conduct a spatial analysis of local businesses and services co-located with EV chargers and identify this as a possible alternative revenue source for chargers in the future.