Rethinking How We Track Charging Industry Growth

Have you ever wondered why certain charge-point operators never show up on US rankings of the largest DC fast charging or Level 2 networks?

For starters, the underlying reason is that almost all companies in the industry, analysts, bloggers, and the media use the Alternative Fuels Data Center (AFDC) database as their source.

In fact, I did too prior to joining Paren and now working with my charging data partner in crime, Bill Ferro, Paren CTO and co-founder. Previously, I would export the AFDC data into Excel and then spend hours and days cleaning up the data — which has lots of errors and omissions. These include:

• Some charging networks submit every port at a single location also as a station. For example, four chargers located side-by-side at a hotel are listed as four ports AND four stations, when it is clearly a single location (station). This leads to a significant over counting of stations in the AFDC data.
• Networks/CPOs submit dual connector/single-port chargers as two ports.
• Bulk upload several months of new station data at once, but all the stations and ports use the same open date (often the date of the upload into AFDC).
• Stations never being submitted to AFDC.
• Charging networks and CPOs that use those same charging networks — both submit the same stations to AFDC.
• Charging networks don't update/remove stations when the CPO switched to a different charging network.
• CPOs submit a station and ports as a brand-new entry, when they’ve simply upgraded the existing hardware at the location.
• Other issues include multiple spellings of addresses for port entries located at the same location. Or in the example below, the address (latitude/longitude) of this port puts it in the middle of a swamp.

Several months ago, Bill and I would get on calls with CPOs and provide “AFDC” training for them, as we had discovered that a lot of companies didn’t understand the AFDC nomenclature and realize they were submitting data incorrectly. But we also often heard CPOs say that their network provider submitted their stations for them and they didn’t realize that their brand was not listed. We’ve since seen many CPOs emerge from their network provider’s listings to now being their own official network in AFDC parlance.

So, in addition to the AFDC database being incomplete, out of date, and wrong due to incorrect data input by CPOs and charging networks — the database has long been biased toward the concept of charging networks (the companies that provide the charge management, network management software, roaming capabilities, and services, often also an eMobility Services Provider [EMSP]) — as opposed to the CPOs and brands associated with the on-site charging experience.

Bill and I have been discussing this issue and conundrum for years, and over this past weekend we made some decisions and changes to how Paren will present the top networks/CPOs going forward. We believe that the charging industry, media, and EV drivers expect that, for example, the Mercedes-Benz HPC stations (currently counted under ChargePoint) and Pilot Flying J (counted under the EVgo network) should be attributed as their own charging network/CPO.

As an aside, I have to give a hat tip to Lang Reynolds, now at Electric Era, back when he was at Circle K, who often gave me crap when I posted my cleaned-up AFDC data — his belief was that AFDC was basically mixing apples and oranges.

While things are still a bit messy (and we will continue to track and report stations and ports in multiple ways so everyone gets credit) — in general we think that the public-facing primary charging brand should get the credit, not just the software/network company behind it.

Using an analogy, perhaps it is akin to moving to Dell getting the credit for laptop sales instead of Intel (the chip inside). Currently in AFDC data, "Intel" would often get counted, not the "Dell." Perhaps a better analogy, however, is a convenience store chain like Sheetz, based in Pennsylvania. Sheetz purchases gasoline and diesel from various regional refineries — but the brand name on the gas pump is of course “Sheetz.”

Below is our high-level criteria for when a charging network’s stations and ports should be tracked and counted as a customer-facing charging network — even when they are not listed in AFDC and are using a third-party EMSP or software/service provider, such as ChargePoint, EV Connect, EVgo, Electrify America, SWTCH, and others.

• The charging stations are clearly branded under the CPOs name, and not the EMSP. Examples of this include Mercedes-Benz HPC,Pilot Flying J/GM Energy, Evolve NY (NYPA), and EVsmart (Exelon).
• The company has a dedicated section on its website promoting its charging station network, including a map and listing of stations. Examples include Pilot Flying J, Mercedes-Benz HPC, and EVolve NY.
• And a strong consideration is given to those networks also included in PlugShare. As an example, networks NOT listed in AFDC, but that ARE listed in PlugShare include: EVsmart (Exelon), Evolve NY (NYPA), Mercedes-Benz HPC, and Pilot Flying J.

We suspect our thinking may evolve on this, and some charging companies are not easily categorized (we've already reached out to a few for their thoughts) — but we believe the current categorization approach used by the AFDC database does not accurately reflect the evolution of the charging industry to large national and regional charging network brands.

We welcome your input on this, and especially the criteria and perhaps even some of the companies not mentioned above that should be included in our tracking of charging networks/CPOs.

By Loren McDonald Chief Analyst, Paren with significant input from Paren CTO and co-founder, Bill Ferro.