We’re excited to share industry insights from Gideon van Dijk, CEO & Co-Founder of Chargetrip. He challenges the growth-at-all-costs mindset in European CPOs and makes a case for why demand control, smart routing, and user experience—not expansion—are the real drivers of profitability.
European CPOs need to stop thinking they can expand their way to profitability
The biggest players can’t push utilisation past 17%. Even high-growth CPOs like Fastned, who deliver 5 million sessions and show positive EBITDA, are posting a €26.6M loss in 2024.
A negative net profit means the company is not creating shareholder value and continues to rely on external financing. This is typical during a growth phase but not sustainable long-term. Asset-heavy funding is changing rapidly, with delayed return on investment.
Fastned utilises both equity and public bond (debt) financing, but increasing leverage can raise financial risk and cost of capital. Ultimately, for long-term viability, the company must generate returns on capital that exceed its cost of capital.
So forget about utilisation; it’s really about how much energy you deliver and how much money you keep. Most CPOs still operate assuming that more stations equate to more revenue. But funny math: it decreases your average utilisation or operating margin when they stay empty. Even with high unit margins, expansion does not lead to capital efficiency.
It’s like opening four more restaurants when your first one only sells two sandwiches daily. That’s not a scaling strategy.
Many CPOs follow a real estate play: build it, and they will come.
Except they don’t.
If you can’t steer demand, you can’t fix performance; if you can’t, expansion drags you further into the red
That’s why more and more industry conversations are shifting away from expansion and toward customer-centric solutions. They’re realising that the real risk isn’t missed growth but churn and missed potential charge sessions.
According to Monta: 30% of EV drivers say they won’t return after just one lousy charging experience. That’s nearly a third of your future customers—gone in a single interaction.
This is why the smartest operators are shifting strategy from land acquisition to demand control; from infrastructure to user experience, from pricing control to cost efficiency and convenience.
This is where routing becomes a core business lever—not just for better UX but for actual (personalised) demand management.
Routing gives CPOs the power to:
• Prioritise underused stations
• Balance network traffic in real time
• Own the driving and charging experience
• Understand where drivers are coming from, where they’re headed, and what they’re looking for along the way
Profitability doesn’t come from adding stations. It comes from making the ones you already have perform better. This isn’t a real estate game anymore; it’s a utilisation game. And CPOs don’t sell land; they sell electrons.
Right now, too many CPOs are just opening many empty restaurants, but like a restaurant, the game is about capital efficiency and healthy capital structures.
