Who owns the charger?
Back to our session, which worked. Step back once more and look at the site as a whole.
Who owns this charger: the service station, the brand on the housing, or the company on the support sticker? The answer explains who invested, who carries the risk and why the site was built here.
The questionWho owns, who operates, who supplied, and what made this location worth the investment?
Guess firstThe service station wanted chargers but did not invest in them itself. Who paid?RevealHide
In many cases a CPO: it finances the hardware, operates the site and pays the host rent or a revenue share. Public funding can also contribute. The central contract is the one between the CPO and the site host.
Five parties and their contracts around one charging site.
The calculation behind the site
A site like this is built when the expected sessions cover the costs. The calculation weighs:
- Income: sessions per day, energy per session, margin per kWh.
- Costs: energy, rent or , service, hardware and the grid connection, which for high-power sites is a substantial investment.
The carries this risk. The other parties have contracts with smaller, more predictable payments.
Power follows parking time
Motorway stops are short, so this site uses high-power DC. A hotel nearby would choose 11 kW AC, because guests park overnight. The power of a site follows how long people stay.
The number of new public charge points per year more than doubled from 2021 to 2023 and has stayed at that level since. From the national registries of Germany and France, the two with a commissioning date. *2026 until 28 Sep.
Why utilisation matters most
The fixed costs of a site run whether cars come or not. Below a certain a fast-charging site loses money, above it every additional session improves the result. Location, reach and availability all feed into this figure, which is why every earlier stop of this path ends up here.
Check your understanding
4 questions. Answer all of them to complete this stop. Each answer explains itself.
Why would a site host give up prime parking spaces for chargers it does not own?
The host benefits twice: the payment from the CPO and customers who stay longer.
Which figure decides most whether this site pays off?
Fixed costs run regardless. Utilisation decides which side of break-even the site is on.
Why does the hotel across the road install 11 kW AC instead of copying this 300 kW site?
Parking time sets the power a site needs. A long stay is served well by AC, so DC would not pay back.
Which earlier stops feed directly into this site's spreadsheet?
Utilisation is where data, energy, money and operations meet.
- Roaming Charging in another company's network with your own card or app. Stop 03 Glossary
- CPO Charge point operator: runs the chargers, keeps them available and sells the charging service. Stop 02 Glossary
- Utilisation How intensively a charger is used, for example in sessions or energy per day. Glossary
- Revenue share An arrangement in which the site host receives a share of the charging revenue, per kWh or per session, instead of a fixed rent. Business models, stop 04 Glossary
- emobility.directory: Charge point operators in Europe, from national registries of 8 countries and OpenChargeMap; Switzerland, Greece, Luxembourg and Poland left out, data as of 28 Sep 2026. https://emobility.directory/. Checked 28 Sep 2026. Charging data: Bundesnetzagentur.de (CC BY 4.0); IRVE, transport.data.gouv.fr (Licence Ouverte 2.0); NDW (CC0); DGT (CC BY); Fintraffic / digitraffic.fi (CC BY 4.0); Via Lietuva (CC BY 4.0); NOBIL by Enova (CC BY 4.0); Open Charge Map contributors (CC BY 4.0), including public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v2.0; combined and calculated by emobility.directory.