Why aren’t EV charging hubs profitable?

In a recent interview with Autocar (6th Oct 2025), Ian Johnston, CEO of charger operator Osprey, put costs associated with the grid as the bottleneck in their profitability equation. In the last three years, the standing charge alone has increased by almost two orders of magnitude.

ChargeUK show that for rapid/ultrarapid chargers (>50 kW) standing charges have increased by 462% since 2023 and now account for the majority of the cost of energy (70%). Standing charges for slow and fast chargers (<50 kW) have also increased by 389%.

Despite charging prices rising by 38%, these additional costs mean that charge point operators remain unprofitable.

One of the reasons rapid (or faster) EV charging is such a challenge is because of the increasing demand for faster charging speeds. With several EVs now capable of charging from 10% to 80% in less than 20 minutes, this means a huge amount of power needs to be delivered in a short time.

The Lotus Emeya can charge at a peak power exceeding 400 kW. Some Gridserve charging stations offer 360 kW chargers. While there aren’t many cars that will accept over 150 kW, and those that can will only take advantage of that full rate for a few minutes, the standing charge for these chargers is based on their capacity rather than usage.

Working through an example, take a typical charging hub of eight charge points. At 360 kW, a 3 MW grid connection is needed (approximately the size needed to power a town of 1,500 homes). Some cars can use close to the maximum power. For example, an Audi e-tron GTR can manage a peak power of 322 kW, but averages just 281 kW over a 15 minute charge. The most popular EV sold in the UK in 2024, the Tesla Model Y, however, can average just 110 kW using the same charger.

ZapMap states that a typical charger of >50 kW is used on average less than 4 times a day for a total of about 2 hours and 15 minutes. Taking the average power output of the model Y of 110 kW during that time would give a total delivered energy of ~250 kWh per day or about 3% of the maximum possible energy capacity of one of these chargers.

The standing charge for a 3 MW high voltage grid connection is approximately £200,000 per year. Using the above example of 250 kW per day per charger means just 730 MWh are delivered per year and the standing charge alone would account for 27p of the cost of each delivered kWh. With policy levies adding 6p/kWh (set to increase to 10p/kWh by 2030) and the unit price of electricity (~22p/kWh) total electricity costs come in at 55p/kWh. Adding in VAT at 20% (rather than the 5% paid to charge at home), leaves just 7p/kWh from the average 74p/kWh rapid/ultra-rapid charging price to cover non-energy costs.

Planning, grid connection and upgrade costs can run into millions of pounds per site; leasing and other non-energy operational costs amount to thousands per year. It isn’t, therefore, a surprise that profitability for such a charging hub is proving elusive.

In the FEVER project, we are demonstrating that by co-locating renewable generation and energy storage with EV charging, the required grid connection can be substantially reduced or removed entirely. Follow the project on our website or get in touch to find out how we are using these grid cost savings to deliver low-carbon, grid independent charging for electric vehicles.