What decides whether a charging site pays off?

Utilisation: sessions and energy per day measured against the fixed costs. Location, roaming reach and availability all feed into it.

Explained in

EV charging fundamentals · Stop 07Who owns the charger?The contracts behind one charging site: who invests, operates, supplies hardware and software, connects the grid, and why utilisation matters most.

The fixed costs of a site run whether cars come or not. Below a certain utilisation a fast-charging site loses money, above it every additional session improves the result. Location, roaming reach and availability all feed into this figure, which is why every earlier stop of this path ends up here.

From “Why utilisation matters most”, stop 07

Terms

  1. RoamingCharging in another company's network with your own card or app.
  2. UtilisationHow intensively a charger is used, for example in sessions or energy per day.
  1. Who pays for the chargers at a supermarket or service station?In many cases a CPO finances, builds and operates them, and the site host receives rent or a revenue share. Public funding can also contribute.
  2. Why do hotels install slower chargers?Guests park for hours, so 11 kW AC serves them well, while expensive high-power DC would rarely pay back. The power of a site follows how long people stay.
  3. Why does charging involve so many companies?Three things spread the work: the grid connection, the location where people park, and contracts that work across many networks. One company can hold several roles, but the roles stay separate.
  4. How many public charge points are there in Europe?More than 1.1 million in the EU alone: the European Alternative Fuels Observatory counted 1,159,838 public recharging points in August 2026. The map on this site covers part of the network: 839,000 public charge points at 227,000 sites across Europe, from national registries and OpenChargeMap.