Should CPOs be ... more?
Or, why charging alone won’t cut it in the future.
In a discussion with Sam Clarke recently for the podcast, we ended up on the joint topics of owning the customer experience and reducing public charger pricing.
One of the comments Sam made was that when you go to a bp petrol station you can use their app and get cheap coffee, for example.
He also talked about the fact that companies such as Tesla can offer reduced price public supercharging because they are not a CPO. They are a car manufacturer that operates charging (I’ve talked about this in earlier posts)
He posited the theory that, perhaps, CPOs should be looking to provide more than just charging services in much the same way that wet fuel stations have become coffee shops, supermarkets and even food courts.1
So the question that arises from that is ‘Should CPOs be more than just, ya know, charge point operators?’
The prime example of this is - as mentioned above - Tesla. They are, essentially, a vehicle OEM that provides charging as a side gig. I’ve talked about this before and I used an example of a tyre repair shop. They will take your car, swap the tyres and - while you are waiting they’ll offer a coffee. This coffee will be much cheaper than a coffee you can get from one of the main chains such as Starbucks, Cost or Café Nero. But that’s because the cost of that coffee is incorporated into the cost of the service they are providing you. The chain coffee shops mentioned above are in the business of providing coffee. That’s the service and product they offer and that’s why it’s more expensive.
I believe this is what Tesla does to allow them to offer cheap charging. They use profits from the sale of their vehicles (and, possibly, even their energy services such as Tesla power walls) to subside the price of charging. If anyone from Tesla is reading this and disagrees with me I am more than happy to get them on the podcast to talk about this. In fact I would welcome it!
Then we have the pure play’ CPOs vs the ‘other’ CPOs. This is a subtle differentiation that many EV drivers don’t appreciate. Pure play CPOs are those who are set up purely to provide electric vehicle charging. All their funding is provided at market rates and they are expected to make a profit on that basis. Examples of this are Osprey Charging, InstaVolt, Gridserve and Fastned. The irony of this conversation with Sam is that Gridserve were - for a long time - a company that had many strings to its bow including electric vehicle leasing. However, over time these other aspects have been pared back meaning that Gridserve is now, once again, a pure-play CPO
Compare and contrast that with other CPOs that are supported by companies with other objectives. This is usually the companies such as bp Pulse and Shell Recharge.
They are expected to make profits as stand-alone companies. But they get a lot of their funding from parent companies, often at preferential rates or terms. This takes pressure off them to repay as quickly as the pure play CPOs. When the ‘market’ looking for profits is your parent company that is currently making profit hand-over-fist it takes a lot of pressure off you as an organisation2. Yes, companies like bp Pulse and Shell still need to make a profit. But that profit won’t always need to be channeled primarily into loan repayments.
The irony with fossil fuel companies running charging is that it is the fossil fuel aspect of the business which is, effectively, subsidising the charging business, although both Shell and bp are amongst the highest-priced CPOs in the UK3.
In the spirit of balance I do need to posit that an alternate solution is to put all your charging eggs in one basket and watch that basket very closely. This is done by providing a really good offering to your customers with reliable chargers and good rates. Make sure you are using good chargers, have a network that is accessible by many roaming partners and offers several methods of payment. Unfortunately, at the moment there are no CPOs that fulfil all those criteria. Some have cheap charging but their chargers are not reliable. Some have reliable chargers with lots of roaming options but are not cheap. Some have reliable, cheap charging but no roaming options or multiple payment methods.
So what should the charging hub of the future look like?
I think there’s a case to say it’ll look like a cross between a current petrol station and a shopping mall.
When people go to a charging hub they want two things; fast charging and something to do while they wait. If they have something to do they may not even want to charge. I am often reminded of the quote from bp Pulse when they opened their hub on the Cromwell Road in West London. Due to its proximity to residential housing it was getting lots of business from local residents coming in to buy food and coffees even without actually charging.
Imagine something akin to a Gridserve Electric Forecourt but... more.
A supermarket, a play area, a coffee outlet, fast food, maybe a small restaurant. Several ranks of ultra rapid chargers. Lots of parking for people who don’t want to actually charge but do want to use the facilities. 4
Is there anyone who has something like this at the moment? No.
Are there plans for anything like this in the future? Not really.
The InstaVolt Winchester Superhub is getting close to it. The facilities are good - but limited (No supermarket or place to buy anything other than a coffee and a snack) and there’s indoor and outdoor areas including play areas for the kids.
Fastned have started looking at some of the sites they are going to build in London as part of their partnership with Places For London. Again they are going to be large sites with lots of charging and <some> facilities. The recently approved Hanger Lane site will have ‘shop, picnic area and toilet facilities’5. What that looks like in practice is anybody’s guess.
Apart from that I can think of no other CPO that is looking to provide the ‘full service’ aspect of charging that I think will be required as we move forward. Many are looking at specific aspects of this. But nobody is looking at all of it.
That’s not to say it won’t happen. Cast your mind back to the opening of the first charging hub in the UK - The Milton Keynes Coachway. That had eight 50kW chargers with canopies in a bus station car park and no facilities. - unless you wanted to trek all the way across the car park and use the overpriced (and less than hygienic) facilities at the bus station. Then we started to get the electric forecourts. Then we got places like Osprey Charging’s Strawberry Fields site in Devon, and the InstaVolt Superhub at Winchester.
I’m sure Sam would read this and say ‘But what about the motorway service areas?’ They have pretty much everything I’ve been talking about: Parking, charging, toilets, shops, food, rest areas. So, maybe Gridserve have the right attitude when it comes to siting their units.
But it also has to be said that the Gridserve model isn’t scalable. They are limited to the number of MSAs at which they operate and, as the discussion with Sam illustrates, some MSA operators have elected to go their own way meaning Gridserve are not at all MSAs. Furthermore it should be easier to get a charge than find the nearest motorway and trek along it to an MSA, right?
At the moment, though they’re the closest we have to what I think the ideal charging hub looks like.
What do you think about what’s at the ideal charging location?
If you’ve ever been to the EGG ‘headquarters’ in Blackburn they have several fast food outlets within their service station giving you a choice of places to eat.
Shell made $6.9billion profit in the first quarter of 2026L https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/shells-profit-beats-expectations-69-billion-2026-05-07/
Shell’s Ubitricity subsidiary providing AC lamppost charging has a basic rate of 76p/kWh whereas Char.gy - a large competitor in the field - charges 39p/kWh for essentially the same service
I was at an event at the Winchester Superhub recently and noticed that all the non-charging parking slots were full for most of the day. Furthermore, the need for parking had spilled over to the point where at least 6 of the actual charging bays were occupied by ICE vehicles who couldn’t find anywhere else to park. With 44 chargers and an average of around 5 being used at any one point this isn’t an issue. But for smaller hubs it could be.
https://www.fastnedcharging.com/en-gb/for-business/places-for-london