The USA EV DC Fast Charge Ecosystem

*Update - forgot to mention this is Public DCFC..I'll have to do another one for Fleet focused DCFC

There's a lot of confusion in the marketplace about what roles different EV Charging companies play. ChargePoint is often mentioned as a "network operator" but while they do have a network, in the overwhelming majority of cases they aren't the Charge Point Operator (CPO) who is responsible for construction funding and operational funding of the stations. Similarly, Sona Energy Solutions is a CPO working with our site host partner The Wendy's Company but the network that shows on Plugshare (see all Plugshare networks at bottom of post) is EV Connect ..which is correct.

But what that means is Sona Energy paid for the station development and Sona Energy operates the stations (I check the performance daily) and covers any operating losses or keeps any profits (hopefully the latter) and Sona Energy pays for any maintenance costs but we pay EV Connect for their software services (payment processing, station monitoring, reporting, etc) and if they don't do a good job (they're doing great), we can remove them and put in another company (far left of above infographic). In short, the CPO is the most important cog in the DCFC EV driver experience, because it's their responsibility to ensure the EV driver has a great charging experience. They are the owners, they hire companies to help them operate the chargers, but the buck stops with the CPO. Hard stop.

I dislike the term "EV Charging network" precisely because it obfuscates who exactly is responsible for the most important aspect of EV Charging: ENSURING THE STATIONS WORK RELIABLY (again, the CPO's responsibility). It was exactly 2 years ago today I expressed some of these thoughts in "Do EV Drivers really care about the EV Network?" and the main point of that post was :

"[An EV driver] wants to find a station close to their home / routine that is reliable and delivers the charging experience they need. More than likely, they will find a few chargers that they like and can rely on. If they have a DCFC at their grocery store and that's on a different network than the DCFC at their favorite restaurant...who cares!

In other words: Location & Reliability >>> Network"

And I believe that more today than when I wrote it 2 years ago. In fact, the entire industry can and should squash the term "Network" and instead use either Charger Management System (CMS) or CPO or whatever is the appropriate categorization for the role being played. (media / reporters take note and maybe John Voelcker can help me here ;) ).

To help reach the goal of getting rid of the nebulous and unhelpful term "network" I wanted to put together the above infographic to provide some clarity into the different roles companies play in the ecosystem. It's obviously not perfect. While some companies are pure play CMS software providers (like EV Connect), other companies might provide a CMS and then also act as a CPO for some sites (like Red E ).

Similarly, while Blink Charging and FLO EV Charging manage their own CMS on their own hardware, they also act as CPO in some instances. But Autel Energy does not act as a CPO and instead sells their hardware/CMS to other CPOs (like Sona Energy and our site here). But more importantly - and why there's an asterisk - while Autel manages its own CMS, they are completely open to using other CMS on their hardware (see Red E) while the others in that column are not (except probably Kempower and maybe Jule but I'm not sure). Related, while I included EVPassport in that column, they don't make their own hardware but rather use a few hardware providers (like XCHARGE North America and Zerova Technologies USA ) but because they sell a bundled solution (and not just a CMS that someone can buy independently of the chargers) I included them in that column.

I'm sure there are companies that I missed, and please include those in the comments, but I tried to use some level of "size" or "funding" or number of installations to determine which companies should be included. For instance IONNA doesn't have any active CPO sites yet, but they are well-funded by 8 auto OEMs (although isn't Kia part of Hyundai?) and they have fairly aggressive (30,000 ports by 2030!) goals for expansion. (see below graphic on Ionna auto OEM backers). (interestingly, Mercedes and GM also act as or fund other CPO efforts in addition to Ionna but in this case more is definitely better for EV drivers.)

So you get the picture that this is a guide but not perfect but I haven't seen a better starting point to explain the participants in EV Fast Charging. Note that I did not include pure play hardware providers who don't offer a CMS because there's a lot of them and that's for another time. This is also primarily focused on DCFC and not Level 2.

The EV Charging turn-key companies below didn't fit neatly in any one column but do things like turn-key EV charging installations and CPO. I put Sona Energy in this bucket.

So please let me know what I got wrong and who I missed and what you think I'm wrong about below in the comments!

A few more graphics below!

Plugshare networks

Ionna Backers

Turn-key + CPO companies