Sure! They provide free parking to all our employees (or mostly), and that’s much more expensive than the charging. It would cost about $7-8 to fully charge an EV based on electric rates here in South Florida, and your average daily charge is going to be less than that. So the per-employee cost of the perk is going to be around $10-15 per month. Roughly what it costs to give an employee two cups of coffee at the office, and (again) a tiny fraction of what we pay to provide employee parking in the first place.
And yet many employers offer free coffee. And free parking, for that matter. It’s just…kind of expected. No one thinks that stuff is going to affect employee choice directly - it’s just what comes with the package.
At least here in Florida, and AIUI the same is true in California, it’s just commonplace for large “office” type employers to offer EV charging. They don’t just get the (modest) benefit of worker satisfaction, they also get to burnish their green bona fides. In some other businesses, it’s become the norm as well - my understanding is that EV charging is typically free at hotels, for example. It’s also a lever that government likes to pull on to try to spread charging infrastructure - to require employers and businesses to add some charging spaces in their facilities, since there’s very few “gas station” analogs for EV’s being built. A lot of people have access to free charging at their workplace or school or municipal parking garage or other locations.
That, combined with the ubiquity of home charging as an alternative, makes the demand curve for third-party EV charging stations very different than for gasoline - which has none of that.
What percentage of the parking spots allow free charging? I bet it is a fraction.
Color me skeptical. Certainly not a scientific survey but every hotel I’ve seen that advertise free EV charging have less than five stations.
Can you name a single company with over 100 employees where at least 25% are offered free charging?
I have long been invested in Amazon and so follow the company, particularly as it has tried to become electrified. Bloomberg made the following statement:
Government electricity use estimates show a 100,000-square-foot warehouse tucked in an industrial area might be powered by about 50 kilowatts, mainly for lighting and air circulation. Setting up 100 chargers in the parking lot could require 10 to 20 times as much power. Amazon Electric Vans Powered By 17,000 EV Chargers - Bloomberg
These are all Level 2 chargers for their delivery vans. Reduce that several-fold for employee vehicles and one is still talking about at least doubling the energy costs of the warehouse. That’s a lot for just providing free charging for about 10% of a 1000 member warehouse workforce.
Musk states that he is not going to add more sites. I was checking and projecting the sites vs gas stations and this is a factor in me purchasing a Tesla.
I have no intention of ever charging at home, and no intention of charging at work.
In other words, a V4 charging system is a requirement to get over the current EV penetration. With this event I will put off a purchase and am seriously considering selling my investment in Tesla. While FSD will work, I have serious doubts about the business of robo taxis and FSD. Remember, Tesla has to justify a E/V four times that of other auto makers to hold its current stock price. Other than Optimus I am not seeing a business case to hold that valuation.
I mean - Google? Even without Googling, I knew they offered free charging to all their employees. Apple too (at their actual corporate campuses in the U.S. - your random Apple store will have whatever parking services are available at that mall or location). My office building now has eight free Level 2 chargers, which are available to every employee in the building (and anyone who pays to park in the garage) - there’s almost always at least one space open when I go in, so that perk is available to 100% of the people who park there.
This is not a new concern. See the below Forbes article. There’s just so much charging capacity available to people (especially at home) that isn’t run as a business, which makes it really hard for any one else to make a business out of providing charging services.
It’s not an analogy between the services. It’s pointing out that employers will offer perks/services, even if they’re not likely to change employee decisions about where to work.
In many (most?) markets - and certainly most places where people will buy lots of EV’s - employers will provide free parking. Which is much more expensive to provide than Level 2 charging. It’s not a big cost for them to provide Level 2 charging - which is why about 75% of EV owners have access to workplace charging. And since it’s often a bad look for employers to charge their employees for inexpensive things, it’s common for workplace charging to be provided for free to employees.
Again, it’s not just Tesla. When cars started gaining widespread adoption in the U.S., you saw private entrepreneurs rush in to set up places to sell gas to them. Because there was money to be made selling gas to all those new car owners. But we haven’t seen that in the EV charging field - charger installation has been driven more by Tesla (as a brand-exclusive feature to sell cars), subsidies/regulation (to try to drive adoption), or as an amenity to other businesses.
All of that taken together is why there simply might not be that much value in the Supercharging business, now that it can’t be positioned as a brand-exclusive feature for Tesla. The stations and the real estate - the hard assets - for sure. Those aren’t going anywhere. But the business of a running and expanding a charging network? Not so much.
Bad wording on my part. A company can offer free charging to all employees as long as EV adoption is low. I am asking if there are any large companies where 25% or more of employees are doing free EV charging. In other words, is there any evidence that this free charging model is scalable to where it will make a significant difference to the charging network business.
Albaby is claiming that free EV charging is or will be a significant factor influencing the profitability of charging networks. I am asking whether there is any evidence that this is likely. I think not. My guess is that once you get to about 25% EV adoption within a company, providing free Level 2 EV charging becomes too expensive.
One place to look for examples is Norway, where EV adoption is high. I don’t get the impression that free EV stations are prevalent, at least not to the level of significant impact, as it appears that public charging networks are profitable.
Price premiums at Norway’s public charging stations are compelling evidence of the early-mover advantage. In Norway, on-the-go charging (on highways and at fuel stations) costs consumers three to four times more than charging their EVs at home.[9] McKinsey’s Global Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure model estimates that by 2030, on-the-go charging and destination charging (at malls, cinemas, and restaurants, for example) in Norway will make up around three-quarters of EV charging profit pools[10] but only around 40 percent of total power demand. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/what-norways-experience-reveals-about-the-ev-charging-market
The same link notes that hybrid gas stations provide charging access and OEMs are building out public charging stations. Such trends suggest that Tesla slowing its own charging station expansion makes some sense. Tesla has the high volume sites and can let 3rd parties expand in the lower volume locations.
A range of new and established enterprises are competing to meet the rising demand for EV charging in Norway. Fuel retailers are adding EV chargers to their stations, while automotive OEMs are taking advantage of their access to new-vehicle purchasers by offering wall chargers for home use and venturing into public charging.
Also relevant to Tesla’s recent moves, the Norway experience suggests that large stations with many chargers are more effective that many small stations with few chargers:
Further trying customers’ patience and creating anxiety are Norway’s highly dispersed EV charging system and the relatively low numbers of chargers per site, both of which create queuing and extend wait times. Larger sites with higher concentrations of chargers are needed, rather than smaller sites spread across the country.
As newer delivery vans will eventually have higher/faster charge rates, they will have to add new chargers to get the higher capacity rates. The Level 2 chargers could be for employee charging as available.
New laws in a variety of states now require EV chargers in new apartment construction. Not 1:1 yet (units w/charger), but that ratio will be reached as people leave and are replaced with new tenants–with an EV.
I mean - is there a large company where 25% or more of employees have EV’s?
It’s both free workplace/school/public facility charging and no mark-up home charging that make “charging as a business” really difficult.
Does that change if we get enough EV adoption that 25% of workers at a company have EV’s? Who knows, but we’re nowhere near that yet (even in Norway, they’re still just under that figure for the vehicle fleet as a whole). Right now, and for the immediate future, EV penetration rates are low and will continue to be. But even then, I suspect that free workplace charging will continue to be prevalent - just like free workplace parking is today.
I don’t want to overemphasize the relative role of workplace charging vs. home charging, BTW. Most of my respondents are talking about the former, but 80% of all EV charging takes place at home (here, and in places with more adoption than we have, like Norway). Both make it harder to run charging as a business, but the home charging is really the biggest reason why a charging business might not have a whole lot of value.
There is no evidence that free workplace charging will ever be prevalent enough to significantly impact the profitability of charging networks. And if public charging networks are profitable in Norway, then there is evidence that a profitable business model exists for such networks even with home charging and the occasional free workplace charging.
I can make my meals at home, but restaurants are still a pretty big business.
I can buy gas cheaper than on the turnpike, but every time I pull into a rest stop with pumps they are quite busy.
While I am loathe to cite Norway too often as a model, here is a projection that use of public charging facilities there will triple in 5 years:
**The electric vehicle charging station revenue in Norway is forecast to grow steadily through 2027, and is projected to reach around 248.3 million U.S. dollars that year** . This would be over three times the revenue estimated for 2022, which stood at some 71.64 million U.S. dollars.
Obviously that is dependent on the uptake of EVs, which in Norway is huge (85+% of new sales), but it seems to indicate that more EVs = more public charging = big business. Not as big as gas stations maybe, but certainly not to be dismissed so lightly.
Oh, and one more:
Last year, the average utilization of a US fast-charging station not operated by [Tesla Inc.] doubled — from 9% in January to 18% in December, according to [new data] from Stable Auto Corp., a San Francisco startup that helps companies place EV infrastructure. Put another way: By the end of 2023, every fast-charging cord in the country was plugged in for an average of nearly five hours a day.
“There’s been a noticeable increase,” said Brendan Jones, chief executive officer of [Blink Charging Co.], which operates about 5,600 charging stations in the US. “We’re heading into 9% and 10% market penetration [for EVs]. Even if we stay at 8%, we’re still not going to have enough charging.”
Rising usage isn’t just an indicator of EV uptake — Stable Auto estimates that a charging station must be pumping electrons around 15% of the time to turn a profit. In that sense, the surging utilization numbers represent scads of stations climbing into the black for the first time, said Stable CEO Rohan Puri.
I just think you’re wrong about this. In the 4 months I have owned an EV I have used public chargers 5 times, and charged at home maybe 5 or 6 times. That might not be average but it demonstrates that “at home” doesn’t kill the need for “remote charging” (and no, Level 2 outside Whole Foods is immaterial to the discussion.)
If you like, then, just ignore my comments about workplace charging and focus on home charging. Since about 80% of total EV charging takes place at home, surely there’s no dispute that that’s prevalent enough to have an impact.
Norway didn’t have to worry about a positive feedback loop between charging and EV adoption. They used massive subsidies to drive EV adoption super-high, super-fast. With EV’s making up close to 90% of new car sales, EV charging can certainly be a profitable business there.
That doesn’t mean the same is true in the U.S. Here we have a chicken/egg problem.
In the U.S., and other European counties, a dearth of public charging facilities is a problem for EV adoption. Without having an unmet demand overhang from moving to near 90% penetration in new car sales in a matter of a few years (like Norway), you don’t have the same kind of demand curve here (or in various European countries with more modest EV adoption rates).
You haven’t yet seen an economically viable third-party public charging business spring up here. Chargepoint’s the largest, but their business model doesn’t seem sustainable. Tesla built a big network on the “brand-exclusive amenity” model, which (obviously) goes away once the exclusivity goes away.
That’s why (again) I think it might actually be a sound business decision for Tesla to step away from the charging network business.
If charging was fast, many would be willing to pay for it. Maybe, along with expensive sodas and phone adapters, it would ba viable business. Fast being the key word.
Oh, I think we can dismiss it pretty lightly. That chart has data up through 2022 (the rest are projections), and shows public charging revenue of about $72 million. Total EV stock in Norway in 2022 was about 817,500 cars. Which means that average Norwegian EV driver spent about $88 in public charging - which is the equivalent of about 11 gallons of gas (Norwegian gasoline prices were about $8 per gallon in 2022). Basically the equivalent of a single fill-up.
My point is that this is not likely to be enough to support the “gas station” model that we have in the U.S. Not even in Norway. As noted by btresist’s links, even with the premiums for public charging created by the massive adoption spurred by the subsidies, Norwegians are mostly getting the odd chargers here and there crammed into nooks and crannies of other sites. Not the large, multi-charger dedicated charging stations that Norwegians say they want. There just isn’t enough money in selling electrons for that model to make economic sense - and the reason there isn’t enough money is because people will mostly charge at home.
The tell (if it happens) will be if the existing gas stations in Norway start shutting down, rather than converting to running the same business but with chargers instead of gas pumps. Right now they’re adding the chargers on, but we don’t know yet whether the revenue from the chargers will be enough to support that model. I suspect it won’t.
It’s not average. Typical EV drivers do 80% of their charging at home.
I am not claiming that there will never be remote charging (much less that there will be no need for it). Just that there might not be enough money in it to support a business that tries to provide a charging network as its business. It may end up being limited to more opportunistic “odds and ends” installations - a few chargers here, a few chargers there, in places with sunk costs and weird configurations and (mostly) existing parking spaces rather than bespoke purpose-built facilities.
In the U.S., I think the most likely outcome is that there just isn’t much of a public charging market because of the negative feedback loop. Unlike in Norway, the lack of a widespread and robust public charging network is going to keep EV adoption limited to those who have ready access to home charging. Which makes it that much harder to run a public charging station…which keeps the non-home charging customers from moving to EV’s.
This is definitely not true at all. It may be cheaper to put in the base infrastructure in one shot (just “may” because it also depends on scale), but it is clearly NOT cheaper to put in expensive 2022/23 charger models when the 2027/28 ones will be better and cheaper and more reliable and more compatible and etc, and can be installed as the EV penetration is rising. Ask any organization that put in those cr@ppy chargepoint chargers a few years ago. A huge percentage of them are inoperable, and many have dropped off of their original sponsor, so nobody “owns them” and nobody is willing to fix them, or even remove them. I was at a resort in Orlando that had a few chargers like that and I couldn’t get them to work, I dialed the 800 number printed on the units (chargepoint), gave them the unit ID number, and they said “those units are maintained by the local facility, we have nothing to do with them anymore”, meanwhile everyone at the local facility had no clue about anything related to those chargers. I was somewhat disappointed that I couldn’t charge there in the parking lot and instead had to drive a few miles to a supercharger.
A company can put in 100 chargers in parking lot A right now, and all the people with EVs will gravitate to that lot. Later, when EVs become more popular, they can put in 200 more modern chargers in parking lot B. The infrastructure to put into lot A and into lot B are essentially separate because the lots are a distance from each other. Not only that, but the local electric utility would prefer that loads be added in phases so they can make sure their local distribution equipment is up to it before anything gets turned on.
I wasn’t saying that, indeed, I don’t believe it except in certain cases: Pilot Travel Centers, Bucees, etc. That’s why I brought up WalMart, which claims to be located within 10 miles of 90% of the US population, which has large parking lots, and where killing 20 minutes probably means bonus shopping for them in addition to whatever revenue split they get for providing the real estate. They’re quite used to this model: the entire front of nearly every store is a collection of nail salons, eyewear shops, and the like which have nothing to do with WalMart except for paying the rent each month and the foot traffic/parking it provides.
I would say that “along the interstates” is a serious requirement if the country is to boost EV adoption, other than that I would think “WalMart” (or similar) would suffice, at least at this stage. Perhaps it grows to other large retailers and malls as the EV penetration requires.
You keep noting that 80% of EV charging happens at home. Two things: that’s now, when a lot of people in rentals don’t have them - and the remaining 20% of the “gas” market would be a pretty substantial business, even split among a half dozen providers. Heck, half that would still be huge.
Sure, but on the other hand there are now in the US one fast charging station for every 15 gas stations, with the number of charging stations continuing to rise coincident with a decline in gas stations. Goofy will be happy to hear the Tennessee opened 13 new fast charging stations in 2024 so far. The US Now Has a Fast EV-Charging Station for Every 15 Gas Stations - Bloomberg
Much of this increase is being led by retailers like WaWa, Sheetz, and Buc-ees. I think this is a good thing. Its not good for one company to monopolize a market.
But what you do have in the US is a continuing need for gas sales from gas stations that will gradually diminish over time. That’s why the hybrid gas/electric station model will likely be a much bigger factor in the expansion of the charging network than in Norway. The viable third-party public charging business model has already been demonstrated by the likes of WaWa, Buc-ees, and Sheetz. Sheetz
There really is no need for Tesla to compete with these folks, not to mention BP, Shell, WalMart and others. Far more profitable to sell the superchargers and batteries and let others do the charger distribution in less populated and/or more gas friendly locations. Tesla can then focus on mega-stations on the interstates and tourist destinations.
Finally it is worth noting that much of this charging expansion is occurring in the middle of the country. Using EVs is becoming increasingly convenient for even red states.
