What is going on with EV charger stocks. Not so many years ago these were some of the darlings of the stock market. Now, many, if not most, have lost 85+% of their market value. (Remember when Blink was valued over a billion dollars!)? You may also remember the mad dash for scale.

Sell to anyone, whether it makes sense for their business or not, so you can claim to be one of the largest charger companies in the U.S. Market the crap out of your chargers in dozens of different ways that really were just branding messaging. The messaging of chargers was those speedy and highly reliable Level 2 versions.

Hmmm, how did that work out for everyone? A few of the big scale big marketing companies had the highest level of downtime. Some very wise people have said never overmarket a bad product. Let's keep selling those Level 2 rocket chargers because they must belong somewhere, and we all have 5-10 hours to wait for a decent charge. Those of you that have seen my senseless ranting in the past know I don't have a deep-seeded love for Level 2 chargers. The good ones are great for overnight charging at home, so just buy them for that.

Then, here comes Level 3, DCFC, fast chargers. They will change everything. Hooray, we are saved. Well, except for the really high costs, the few companies that build great Level 3 chargers, that they sell to other charger companies who can't figure them out, or don't have the money to try.

The governments Infrastructure Plan was going to fix that. Billions of dollars distributed to States through the poorly devised NEVI Plan. To be fair and equal to every State, let's make the minimum number of these DCFC chargers 4, and let's make them all must deliver 150 kilowatts of power, out of both ports, if your charger has two, and let's put them 50 miles apart because that darned old range anxiety needs to be solved. Oh, and let’s suggest a 20% match for those who purchase or have a rich friend who wants to own 3/4 of one charger! By the way, seems some States are covering this, while others are asking for a 50% match. If the total cost (hardware, installation, warranty, etc. comes out to be $700K, someone has to come up with $140K for the match.

McKinsey and Company reported an average charger utilization rate in the U.S. of about 7.5% (Oct. 5, 2023) and reported a possible of 50.3% of cars sold by 2030. (I am thinking I may have to call BS on that number). The report also presents a chart that even at 15% utilization with an average per kilowatt per hour rate of 50 cents, it is almost (it is) impossible to make money on the chargers alone.

So, what in wide world of sports is going on here. We have incentives for the purchase of cars, and the NEVI plan and other incentives out the Wazoo!

But gosh darn it, this is going to be great so let's keep doing it!