“How much does a charger make?” is the wrong question - the honest answer is always “it depends.” The useful question is what actually drives that number, because every input is something an operator can plan around before installing hardware, not just measure afterward. This walks through the revenue model per connector and where the real costs sit.
The formula behind connector revenue
Strip away the marketing and a connector's revenue comes down to four inputs multiplied together, minus what it costs to deliver:
Revenue = Utilization × Sessions per day × Energy or time billed × Price − (Energy cost + Network/software cost + Maintenance)
Each of those has a very different amount of operator control behind it.
Utilization: the number that dominates everything else
Utilization - the share of available charging time actually used by paying sessions - is the single biggest lever on connector economics, and the one operators most consistently overestimate. A connector sitting idle 90% of the day earns a small fraction of one sitting idle 50% of the day, even at identical pricing. Utilization is driven far more by site selection (dwell time, visibility, competing chargers nearby) than by anything in the software layer - which is why site selection deserves as much diligence as hardware selection.
Pricing: fixed per-kWh isn't the only model
Operators typically choose from a few pricing structures, often blended by site or customer segment:
- Per-kWh pricing - straightforward, easiest for drivers to compare against competitors, but doesn't account for how long a bay is occupied.
- Per-minute (time-based) pricing - better reflects the real cost of a bay being occupied, useful where connector time is the scarce resource, not energy.
- Session or flat fees - simple, but can undercharge long sessions and overcharge quick top-ups.
- Idle fees - a separate charge after a vehicle finishes charging but stays parked, which protects utilization by freeing the bay faster.
- Tiered or dynamic pricing - different rates by time of day, demand, or membership tier.
The pricing model has to match the site's actual bottleneck. A high-turnover retail site with limited bays benefits from idle fees and time-based pricing; a workplace site with long dwell times and low competition for bays may not need either.
Costs: where margin actually gets decided
- Energy cost - what the operator pays for electricity, including demand charges, which can spike sharply if multiple chargers draw peak power simultaneously without load management.
- Software/network cost - the CSMS, payments, billing and app layer. Priced per connector, as a platform fee, or as a percentage of transaction volume, depending on the vendor.
- Maintenance and uptime cost - a connector that's down doesn't just lose that session's revenue, it loses every session that would have happened during the outage. Downtime is a direct, compounding hit to the utilization number above.
- Payment processing - card and wallet processing fees, which matter more at low average transaction values.
A worked example
The numbers below are illustrative, not a benchmark or a projection for any specific site - actual figures depend heavily on location, hardware, tariffs and local electricity rates. They're here to show how the pieces combine, not to promise a return.
| Input | Illustrative value |
|---|---|
| Sessions per day | 4 |
| Average energy delivered per session | 20 kWh |
| Price to driver | $0.40 / kWh |
| Gross revenue per day | 4 × 20 × $0.40 = $32.00 |
| Energy cost to operator | $0.14 / kWh → 4 × 20 × $0.14 = $11.20 |
| Gross margin per day (before software/maintenance) | $32.00 − $11.20 = $20.80 |
Move utilization from 4 sessions a day to 2, and gross margin is cut in half with no other input changed. Move it to 6 through better site selection or idle-fee enforcement, and it grows by 50% - which is why utilization deserves more planning attention than the pricing decision it usually gets compared against.
Where software changes the equation
A platform doesn't generate demand at a site, but it directly affects two of the variables above: uptime (through remote monitoring, alerts and diagnostics that catch faults before they cost a day of sessions) and pricing flexibility (through tariff and billing tooling that lets an operator actually run idle fees, time-based pricing or tiered rates, rather than being stuck with whatever the hardware supports natively). See how CarChargeOS handles sessions, tariffs and billing on the platform page, or the full commercial picture on pricing.
Frequently asked questions
What's a “good” utilization rate for a charger?
There's no universal benchmark - it varies enormously by site type (workplace, retail, fleet depot, highway corridor) and local EV adoption. The more useful exercise is modeling your own site's expected dwell time and competing supply, not comparing against an industry-wide average.
Should I price per kWh or per minute?
It depends on what's actually scarce at the site. If bay availability is the constraint, time-based or idle-fee pricing protects utilization better. If energy cost is the dominant expense and bays turn over easily, per-kWh pricing is simpler and easier for drivers to compare.
How much does downtime actually cost?
More than the direct maintenance expense - every hour a connector is down is an hour of lost utilization that can't be recovered, plus a driver experience cost that can push repeat users to a competing charger permanently.