Frost Radar™: Electric Commercial Vehicle Charging Network Start-ups in North America and Europe, 2022

Frost Radar™: Electric Commercial Vehicle Charging Network Start-ups in North America and Europe, 2022

As government initiatives promote the use of zero-emission vehicles and commercial vehicle manufacturers continue to launch new models, Frost & Sullivan projects that about 7.2 million electric commercial vehicles will be in operation in North America and 5.8 million in Europe by 2030. Sufficient charging infrastructure will have to be in place to eliminate range anxiety, which is an operator’s fear of being unable to find a charging station when vehicle power runs low.

Several new and cross-industry participants have entered the nascent electric commercial vehicle charging infrastructure industry in the past few years to cater to the expected demand and are formulating their market approaches and identifying potentially lucrative revenue streams. Huge investments by value chain participants have been materializing to gain a first-mover advantage.

A charging network provider, for the purposes of this project, follows one or more of these business models:
• Asset-owned turnkey (asset heavy, high capex), in which it owns and operates the charging station and provides connectivity of the charging
station to the network. In this model, the provider incurs the costs of the charging equipment and installation.
• Host-owned (asset light, low capex), in which it sells hardware, software, and services to a station owner. The buyer incurs the installation and
operational costs and can connect to any network, although the provider’s network is preferred.
• Charging-as-a-service, in which it owns and operates the charging station while the property partners incur the installation costs. The latter pays
a fixed monthly or yearly fee and keeps all charging revenue (excluding network/connectivity fees).

Competitive differentiators could include the number of stations in a network, station accessibility, availability of battery-integrated or wireless charging, efficient capital deployment, diversity in revenue streams and business models, the ability to accommodate a variety of vehicle models across different standards with higher power capabilities, software-enabled services with easy-to-use mobile app interfaces, attractive pricing, brand recognition and reputation, and partnerships.

The Frost Radar™ reveals the market positioning of companies in an industry using their Growth and Innovation scores as highlighted in the Frost Radar™ methodology. The document presents competitive profiles on each of the companies in the Frost Radar™ based on their strengths, opportunities, and a small discussion on their positioning. Frost & Sullivan analyzes numerous companies in an industry and benchmarks them across 10 criteria on the Frost Radar™, where the leading companies in the industry are then positioned.