SERVICE OFFERING | How to design a charging infrastructure to ensure profitability
To understand the challenge, it needs to be broken down. The answer is not obvious and rather complex. At an early stage we realized that there is a need for a holistic approach to the charging business.
Fortos have developed a framework, in close cooperation with clients and partners, to facilitate the process of designing complete end to end solutions for charging. If you are into business strategy, you will probably notice that our model is influenced by Porter´s value chain where we have divided charging activities into strategically relevant pieces. It provides an overview of activities required to establish and maintain a charging infrastructure. It includes cost drivers and possible sources of differentiation.
This approach has been appreciated by our clients, across different industries, as it makes it easier for them to understand the overall context and to determine their own positioning in the charging value chain. The framework is applicable for both passenger car and commercial vehicles, even if the underlying logic might be different (uptime requirements for commercial vehicles as an example).
In our model the charging activities are divided into “one-off”, (defining and setting-up charging infrastructure) and “running” activities (maintaining chargers and providing services to end users).
All activities described in the model are associated with a cost. To make a profit the value provided to the charging customer must be higher than the cost of creating the value. It can be considered on a complete system level or for each substituent component of the system.
Our view is that utilization of chargers, volume of scale, operational excellence, pricing logic and add-on services are the most important factors to get an attractive charging business.
Fortos have a lot of experience and concepts related to the individual elements of the value chain so please stay tuned as we are planning to publish more insights going forward.
