August 30, 2023

(Fast) Charging infrastructure is essential to the expanded adoption of Electric Vehicles. It has been mostly an after thought. Much like oil and gas companies are now with refueling of petrol, the goal of the federal government is to have this infrastructure market based.

Tesla gets most of the media when it comes to charging stations investment. Tesla Superchargers is the second largest single-brand charging station company in the USA. It has an estimated value of $20B inside Telsa, but this is disputed by some bears in the financial sector. Tesla will have over 6000 locations at the end of the year. Telsa is also Canada's fifth largest charging (network) company, behind FLO, Electric Circuit, ChargePoint, and SWITCH.

The largest charging station network in the USA is ChargePoint with 31,000 locations. Market Cap is $3B, which is a much smaller financial footprint than Tesla Supercharger, but is also already making profit, which Telsa chargers is not. ChargePoint has capitalized to expand through the USA federal subsidy regime.

In Canada, we have FLO and IVY (Ontario only).

FLO is a public and pension fund financed private company. A classic Canadian creation where government money has bankrolled the entire thing, but it is not a Crown or publicly owned company. As a private, government controlled company, it is opaque in its financing, subsidy, and profit reporting.

FLO is the largest Canadian brand of EV charging stations and "competes" with the following companies in the build-out:

• Ivy Charging Network (Ontario Charging Network LP, OPG, HydroOne)
• ChargePoint
• Enel X
• Grizzl-E
• SWITCH Energy
• Hypercharge
• Tesla
• Sun Country
• Unico Power
• Webasto Charging
• Untied Chargers
• Lite-On
• Leviton
• SemaConnect
• SolarEdge
• BOSCH
• Delta
• EVBOX
• ABB
• EFACEEC USA

On top of the charging station build-outs, there is the connection to the grid and the companies that seek to expand charging infrastructure, but do not own anything:

The Electric Circuit-FLO (HydroQuebec) and EnRoute-Ivy-Canadian Tire (and OPG) are examples of infrastructure partnerships necessary for building out charging stations along high-ways in Canada.

BC has established Emotive as a partnership between PluginBC, FortisBC, BC Hydro and the Fraser Basin Council. This collaboration does not own or build-out charging stations, but provides rebates and support to those who will, relying on an open market solution to charging stations. BC Hydro has BC Hydro EV which has 81 charging stations.

Other provincial hydro charging station network coordinators include Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro with 14 chargers, Toronto Hydro with 108 chargers.

• 5,265-6000 Supercharger stations worldwide
• 2000+ in the USA
• Companies apply to be "hosts" of Tesla chargers.
• Hosts can be franchise-like companies hosting Tesla chargers on areas leased from larger companies with new additional fees through the app. These are referred to as Tesla Destination stations.
• Tesla installs, maintains, and pays for the energy, but does not pay rent for the stations.

• Federal government subsidy requires a CCS connector.

  • Tesla currently does not have CCS for most of its chargers in the USA
  • NACS (Tesla charger) has been adopted by automakers.
  • Tesla Magic Dock has an adapter to convert to CCS
  • Tesla Magic Dock allows access to $7.5B in federal government incentives to build out CCS-equipped charging infrastructure.
  • 2024: opening 3,500 new and existing Superchargers along highway corridors to non-Tesla customers
  • Would also offer 4,000 slower chargers at locations like hotels and restaurants.

• USA direct subsidy: $7.5B

  • Combined Charging Station (CCS) standard is required to get current federal subsidy
  • Subsidy dependent on adopting the CCS standard.
  • National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program run and coordinated by the Department of Transport.
  • $5B for States: charging infrastructure along highway corridors
  • $2.5B federal: competitive grants to support community and corridor charging

• Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Training Program (EVITP):

  • Workforce standard in training
  • supports union jobs installing/maintaining charging stations

• 20,000 publicly available charging stations at 8,249 charging sites.
• Total: 34,500 EV chargers funded by the federal government (public/private)
• current build-out of 50,000 new chargers
• $400 million in direct private investment support
• $500 million in financing through the Canada Infrastructure Bank