The newest vertical in EV Charging space

As per IEA's report, EV Charging points were up 40% in the year 2021. Nearly 500,000 chargers were installed last year alone. China is the global leader and it accounts for 85% of the world's fast chargers and 55% of slow chargers.

But chargers by nature are in many in a certain location and locations spread across the world. Thus making it quite a challenge to service and maintain them.

Enter a new vertical. EV Charger Repair.

Companies like ChargerHelp are dedicated to fix broken EV chargers. They take of recruiting and training the workforce. They can intelligently deploy them and help keep the EV infrastructure up and running

From a charging companies point-of-view, this probably is a welcome change. This kind of model would lead to a better economics for both parties. They could even outsource this to local franchises instead of every charging company/OEM to add this to their balance sheet.

The very nature of chargers, that they are spread geographically and technicians require specific training is a good enough reason for companies like ChargerHelp to exist.

Given the circumstances, and the amount of cash that is flowing into this space from governments(for example the $5 billion federal program) and private sources. There is a huge potential for a first mover advantage here. Fixing EV chargers, I believe is a space that is very hard to differentiate from your competitor apart from the basic rules of business; Offer a great customer service, focus on uptime, make the price an easy sell.

First-movers in these kind of spaces usually benefit the most as they can pick up the most territory right away. As the business mantra goes, it is better to be like a painkiller than a vitamin. EV Chargers fall into the painkiller category for sure. It is a necessity from a consumer point of view, and from an OEM/Charger owner point of view, it is their source of recurring revenue.

But is this a even a problem to solve? A recent study shows that about a quarter of public chargers in the Bay Area were not functional. Non-functional can be due to a lot of reasons, but here are a few that I think would top the charts:

1. Component failure: Pieces of the charging circuitry have broken or is in an unsafe condition. This is the hardest of problems as they are usually not repeatable, and would almost always need someone to physically service the charger.

2. Environment and weather related: Pretty self-explanatory.

3. SW Related issues: Most EV chargers these days are connected to the internet and some backend gateway. I see that these kind of issues will be solved with over-the-air updates.

4. Payment gateway issues: Most EV chargers have an integrated payment gateway or an endpoint that can connect to some kind of an app to facilitate the payment.