This is only true under the assumption that all charging is done at fast charging stations. In reality most people, will use slow chargers where they park their car, work, home etc. Basically 90% of the revenue of a gas station is gone because people will slow charge majority of their driving needs. Electricity is 1/3 cost per mile compared to oil; therefore roughly 97% of gas station revenue is gone excluding merchandise sale. This is the reason I believe third party superchargers are not growing as fast. They need a gigantic fleet to break even. The cost of a supercharger must be included in the cost of the car. This where the business model is fundamentally different from oil/gas station. For traditional OEMs, this is a chicken and egg problem. Unless they sell huge number of EV cars, they cannot embark on building a gigantic network of fast chargers and they do not want to sell a large number for EVs.
I believe this is why Tesla started building Superchargers themselves because they realized that in the new EV world an OEM will also have to provide charging needs. Remember, a supercharger costs substantially lesser than a gas station.
I know people should only be using fast chargers or road trips, including business trips and holidays.
These are the precise times when most reasonable people don't mind the operator making some mark up on the electricity, say 20%-30% perhaps even higher. Some people might seek out a cheaper option, but that cheaper option is making a lower margin.. and that might affect the quality of the service.
When Tesla first started free Supercharging for Model S/X, the fleet size didn't justify paid charging, now the fleet size is sufficient for paid charging to make a contribution, and for free Supercharging for the whole fleet to be more expensive.
In some places paid Supercharging only makes a token contribution...
But if we imagine a fleet size 2X-5X the current fleet size, larger stations with attached shops now makes sense, a customer might spend $10 on charging with a $3 margin and $50 in the shop with a $20 margin...
The attached retail shop/cafe/restaurant is the big opportunity, so far Tesla hasn't tapped that in any meaningful way, but as the fleet gets larger, so does the retail opportunity.
Elon has always said Supercharging will not be a profit center, but he never said it can't break-even, or that retail can't be attached.
Even if Tesla doesn't decide to tap the fast charging + retail opportunity, others will, once fleet size makes that attractive..
What we will see here is some businesses will tap into future opportunities better than others, fast charging needs a lot of up front investment with a low rate of return, so perhaps it is profitable over an 8-10 year time-frame, but the attached retail might be profitable over a much shorter time-frame.
Up to now small fleet size has been a big problem especially for non-Tesla cars, so yes a chicken and egg, but once the eggs start showing up anyway, chickens are inevitable. Regardless of the fast charging issues, people are going to start buying more EVs.
