Charging 2.0: Data is the New Incentives
The fast-charging industry is growing up. Oh, there are of course still some pimply-faced kids in the mix, but by and large the adults have entered the room and are moving the industry to the next level.
This transition to what we at Paren call “Charging 2.0” hasn’t happened over night, but has been brewing for the last few years. But in conversations with many companies and customers, we have recently seen a sudden wake-up call that is an additional catalyst to the next phase of the charging industry. That recent trigger has been the Trump administrations attempts to slow the EV and EV charging industry, including pausing the NEVI program and the plan to rip out chargers installed at government facilities.
Grants and incentives have long been foundational to the charging industry, especially for fast charging stations which can cost $150,000 to $250,000 per port to deploy. State incentives and grants, utility make-ready programs and hardware rebates, carbon credits, and the federal tax credit have played — and will continue to play — a role in reducing deployment costs and shortening the time to profitability of fast-charging stations.
However, the NEVI “pause” and planned removal of charging stations at GSA-managed government facilities has been a wake-up call for many companies in the charging industry. At several companies we are seeing a significant pivot to being much more data driven around site location and operating decisions. While all charge-point operators (CPOs) have used some level of data and ROI forecasts when considering site locations, a key input to the model frequently was incentives to lower deployment costs.
With a combination of rapidly increasing utilization rates, growing competition and uncertainty around the availability of incentives — especially at the federal level — accurate and reliable utilization data is becoming paramount to financial models and business decisions for CPOs of all sizes.
Companies are incorporating utilization and session data — such as what we provide at Paren — into sophisticated models to help determine not only where to locate new fast charging stations, but which to pick or prioritize among many locations being considered. Secondly, utilization data is used so that CPOs can benchmark their stations against nearby competitors to understand if a station is underperforming and gain insights on avenues to improve performance and profitability.
Finally, while most CPOs actively track uptime and whether their chargers are online, we’ve found that many CPOs that rely on third party networks are often surprised to find out that charger has not been available to EV drivers for multiple days. In fact, with Paren’s tracking of open NEVI stations, we’ve already alerted two companies that were surprised to learn that they had inoperable charging ports.
At Paren our goal is to help the industry greatly improve the public charging experience for EV drivers by providing the most detailed, accurate, real-time, and reliable data in the industry. If you will be at the EV Charging Summit March 25-27, we’d love to meet up with you and discuss how data can help transform your charging business and profits.
In future articles in our “Charging 2.0” series we will look at changes including new and bigger companies entering the industry; a greater focus on amenities, safety, reliability; brand and loyalty; and more.
By Loren McDonald, Chief Analyst
