The US charging network 2.0—The evolution of a revolution: Part 3
» Read part 1 here: How the biggest US EV charging networks got their starts
» Read part 2 here: How government helped build America’s EV charging market
The US charging landscape is still evolving quickly. Some operators are downsizing or exiting, others are winning major subsidies or loan guarantees, and a new class of competitors—from travel centers to automaker-backed ventures—is trying to scale into the gap.
The shakeout continues
During the past two years, the charging network landscape continued its evolution as several operators shuttered or retreated due to challenging economics. In 2024, European companies Engie and Enel X both left the US market after trying to leverage their domestic charging experience. In December 2024, Shell announced it would stop supporting the charging software it had licensed to other companies and instead focus on managing chargers at its own retail locations. In August 2025, Shell scaled back further by halting operations of the Volta network of 2,000 chargers that it had acquired in 2023. In November, Shell sold portions of the Volta network to JOLT, an international operator of chargers and digital media.
Conversely, EVgo received a major boost when it landed a $1.25 billion DOE loan guarantee in December 2024 to expand its public fast-charging footprint nationwide. Overall, the number of fast chargers installed across the country continued to swell in 2025, with nearly 1,500 stations added in the second and third quarters according to Paren. Tesla far outpaced every other network in growth, controlling nearly 45% of all charging ports added in Q3.
The largest charging networks are also busily building stations with NEVI support. According to the EVStates Clearinghouse awards dashboard, as of April 2026, Tesla, EVgo, Electrify America, Blink and ChargePoint have collectively been awarded $67.5 million in NEVI funds to build 834 charging ports—an average cost to taxpayers of $67,500 per port. Newer competitors are also pursuing those awards aggressively. Two of the biggest beneficiaries are convenience-store operators Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores and Pilot Travel Centers, which together plan to install nearly 700 charging ports. Love’s is developing locations in partnership with ChargePoint, while Pilot works with EVgo and other networks.
Privately held Francis Energy, founded in 2015, has received more than $105 million in NEVI funds—more than any other company—and operates 143 charging locations across nine states. EVGateway, launched in 2017, ranks as the fifth-largest NEVI recipient at roughly $25 million and says it has a network of 2,500 stations.
A charging network backed by a group of automakers has also emerged as a formidable competitor. OEMs have long been skeptical that the private market would keep up with EV sales while delivering a high-quality charging experience, and in July 2023 BMW, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes and Stellantis announced plans to create a fast-charging network in the US and Canada. The venture, later named IONNA, was joined by Toyota a year later and intends to operate 30,000 chargers. IONNA prioritized convenience-store locations and struck deals with Sheetz, Wawa and Casey’s. By March of 2026 Ionna has 100 locations in operation and had won $3.3 million in NEVI funds. It could remain independent, or eventually become an acquirer itself.
In addition to federal incentives that may soon disappear, charging networks can lower upfront costs through state, municipal and utility programs. California’s CALeVIP remains the largest example, with other notable programs in New Jersey and New York.
Why this matters: The market is not simply growing, it is churning. Some players are exiting, some are consolidating, and others are using public support or strategic partnerships to try to gain enough scale to survive.
Reliability is improving, but uptime still rules
Maintaining functioning charging stations—not only to keep the door to revenue ajar, but also to reduce EV owner angst—continues to be challenging. The industry has made progress in reliability, usually measured in uptime, the percentage of time a charger is ready for use, but there is still ample room for improvement. According to a 2025 JD Power survey of public charging, the percentage of visits in which EV drivers could not get any power fell to its lowest level in four years, a sign that reliability and customer experience are steadily improving.
Poor uptime makes the already difficult task of achieving strong utilization and profitability even harder, according to Wayne Killen, former Director of Charging Infrastructure Planning and Business Development at Electrify America. If chargers can deliver power around 20% of the time, then the promised land of profitability could be reached. Any time a charger is offline beyond normal maintenance and upkeep reduces revenue potential, he said.
Pat (Pasquale) Romano, who led ChargePoint for nearly 13 years, likewise said he has seen progress in both charging reliability and the underlying power-delivery technology. “I think charging technology development is going well,” he said. “There is no technology deficit.”
Why this matters: A charging site can only earn money when it is energized, functional and trusted. Reliability is not just a customer-experience metric, it is the first gate to utilization and therefore to profitability.
The economics problem—and the equity paradox
Profitability remains elusive for charging network operators. The three largest publicly traded charging companies—Blink, ChargePoint and EVgo—posted combined net losses of more than $600 million in 2024, based on their income statements. Tesla’s charging profitability is harder to isolate because it sits inside a much broader business. All three pure-play charging companies also saw their stock prices slide in 2025.
Network profitability is constrained by both how much traffic comes to a station and the upper limit of the fees drivers are willing to pay. The industry’s conventional wisdom has long held that a charge cannot cost more per mile than filling a gas tank, but that view is softening. DC fast charging that exceeds the cost of gasoline can be tolerated for occasional long-distance trips as long as it is not excessive and as long as drivers look at their total cost of driving electric. If most charging (estimated at up to 80%) happens cheaply at home—where costs can be less than 12 cents per kWh—then using public infrastructure for the remaining 20% can still make economic sense. Level 2 charging, better suited for overnight or other long dwell times, costs more than residential charging but less than gasoline. According to Stable Auto, the average cost of Level 2 charging in summer 2025 was 25 cents per kWh and fast charging was 47 cents per kWh.
Romano said infrequent fast charging, used to complement less-expensive home and workplace charging, may cost more than gasoline but is acceptable because for drivers it “has little impact on their overall fuel bill.”
High utilization is needed to pay back the initial cost—often hundreds of thousands of dollars—to equip and energize a charging station, while also offsetting the ongoing cost of electricity. Yet wide utilization differences between seemingly similar sites continue to mystify network operators. Charging networks are constrained by the “glass ceiling of how many EVs are on the road” in an area, according to Romano. Third-party tools that model likely traffic at a charging location can reduce some of the guesswork, but they cannot conjure demand that is not there.
Some stations are necessary even though they may never make money. Rural locations and low-EV-density corridors are essential to enable travel, but they are unlikely to ever be profitable on their own. Ben Prochazka, the Executive Director of the Electrification Coalition, argues that the cost of these less-frequented locations should be socialized across the broader network, much as utilities provide power in less densely populated areas.
The expansion of the EV market to include a more diverse audience can boost utilization, but it also presents a paradox. Drivers who cannot charge at home and rely on public charging are often more price-sensitive and less able to pay premium fast-charging fees. According to a 2025 Federal Reserve report on housing and household well-being, 85% of families making more than $100,000 own their homes, while well under half of families making under $100,000 do. That homeownership gap matters because it often determines whether a driver has access to low-cost home charging. Developing discounted rates or incentives for lower-income EV drivers, including high-mileage rideshare drivers, could help create the utilization that operators crave without pushing away the customers most dependent on public infrastructure.
Why this matters: The hard part was never just installing chargers. It was building a business that can tolerate high capital costs, uneven traffic, power costs, rural obligations, and customers whose willingness to pay is constrained by the very economics that make public charging necessary.
Next in the series: The economics of public charging are still tough, but the industry is already starting to adapt. In Part 4, we look at how charging networks are evolving to become more reliable, better utilized and more financially durable.
About the author: John Gartner has been analyzing and writing about EV infrastructure since 2009. He is the Senior Director at the Center for Sustainable Energy.
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