Selling the electron is a commodity business. What earns sits around it — bay-time, vehicle mix, the return visit.
If the answer to any of them is “we can already do that”, say so and I’ll drop it.
Session by session, can you see contribution, not revenue, once electricity and the site’s share come out?
Do you know what cars use your bays — BYD, Tesla, Kona, taxi fleets?
Which sites are busy late evening, and which sit empty at noon?
How much of each session sits above 80% charge, earning almost nothing?
Which sites sit on the wrong electricity tariff for their load shape?
Of the drivers who charged with you last quarter, how many came back?
A CCS2 session exchanges this natively. No new hardware, no dongle, no CAN access.
A stable per-vehicle identifier (evccID). State of charge. Voltage, current and power limits. Session energy and duration.
Usable battery size, 400V or 800V architecture, the charging-curve signature, time still plugged in after full.
Exact model. True battery capacity. State of health. CCS2 does not carry these — anyone claiming otherwise is guessing.
Hyundai Kona 64 kWh on a 120 kW DC fast charger, modelled from the published CC–CV curve.
That band is 11% of the energy and 37% of the session.
| Band | kWh | Minutes | kWh / minute |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10–80% | 44.8 | 42.0 | 1.067 |
| 80–90% | 6.4 | 15.1 | 0.424 |
| 90–100% | 6.4 | 33.2 | 0.193 |
The aim: get the 90% driver to leave before they block the next car.
| Band | What the car is doing | What you want the driver to do |
|---|---|---|
| Below 80% | Taking full power | Stay. This is the profitable window. |
| 80–90% | Tapering | Start thinking about leaving. |
| Above 90% | Trickling | Free the bay for the next car. |
I haven’t proposed rates here — that’s your call. But one flat price per unit means your 80% driver is subsidising your 100% driver.
Cornerstone Technologies FY2025, audited — the only Hong Kong charging operator that files.
| HK$M | FY2025 | FY2024 |
|---|---|---|
| EV charging income | 44.2 | 23.9 |
| Selling hardware | 64.6 | 64.8 |
| Installing it | 7.4 | 60.3 |
| Total revenue | 125.2 | 153.1 |
| Gross margin | 24.8% | 17.8% |
Charging income +85.3% — now 35.3% of revenue, up from 15.6%.
Revenue fell only because they chose to stop installing (−87.8%).
And still: adjusted LBITDA −HK$34.4M, net loss HK$115.2M, accumulated losses HK$617.8M.
Going-concern material uncertainty every period since 2020.
The other nineteen it sits there, fully paid for. That is the asset in this business.
And it costs HK$55,900 a year in capital either way. Idle hours are already bought and paid for.
| One 120 kW bay, a year | Today |
|---|---|
| Charging sessions | 2,313 |
| Hours actually charging | 1,734 |
| Hours in the year | 8,760 |
| Share of the year in use | 20% |
Not because the price is good. Because the capital is already paid for, so every extra unit keeps its full margin.
| One 120 kW bay, per year | Profit over its capital | |
|---|---|---|
| Today, HK$3.35 in the busy hours only | HK$3,751 | — |
| Plus HK$2.20 in the quiet hours | HK$11,768 | 3.1× |
| Same, on a forecourt you own, billed off-peak | HK$52,683 | 14× |
How far each assumption moves the price a bay has to charge to break even.
What stays with the operator out of each dollar, before the bay’s capital.
| Of every HK$1 a driver spends | Kept per unit | Of the HK$1 |
|---|---|---|
| The market, at the median HK$3.20 | 0.91 | 28c |
| Shell today, HK$3.35 | 1.03 | 31c |
| Shell fast points, HK$3.75 | 1.36 | 36c |
| With a membership at HK$3.24 | 1.03 | 32c |
| …and a wallet that also works at the shop | 1.11 | 34c |
One question, answered properly, on data you already hold.
Sit with whoever owns the session data and see what is actually recorded today.
One sample, one control group, one measurable change. Nothing that needs capital.
Did it move contribution, is it worth continuing, and which assumption was wrong. If it does not hold, we stop.