Making Every Day Electric: Electric Rideshare + Fast Charging Superhubs
By: Paul Suhey, Revel Co-Founder and COO
Today, we’re proud to announce our all-electric rideshare service. Our Revel-operated, employee-driven fleet of custom Tesla electric cars will soon begin operating below 42nd street in Manhattan.
We believe that rideshare will help accelerate the buildout of our fast-charging Superhubs.
Fast Charging Headwinds
On its own, the EV fast charging business has significant headwinds to be successful.
The chargers and sites require steep development costs. Charging stations have high fixed operating costs, and, because there are so few EVs on the road, chargers are hardly used.
This is not a recipe for success. Imagine a factory assembling widgets: All of the equipment is expensive to buy (development costs) and to even turn on (fixed operating costs). If you only produce a few widgets, each widget will be insanely costly. But — if you are able to run the assembly line at full capacity — the costs are spread over each widget, making the equation work.
Fast charging stations need utilization (more widgets) to have any chance at profitability. Without high utilization, EV fast charging stations cannot make money. It’s estimated that fast charging stations need at least 8 hours a day to put customer pricing on par with gas or diesel refueling costs. Many smart people and industry-leading companies are working hard on this, but, right now, we have a chicken-and-egg problem. We need fast charging stations to drive EV adoption in cities, but we need EV adoption to drive fast charging station development.
Need for a Better Business Model
In an effort to increase utilization, other charging companies have courted large rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft because of the high number of miles these cars do everyday. However, with independent contractors using their own vehicles to drive, the case for drivers to switch to an EV must be compelling and cost effective. So far, they remain largely unconvinced and put off by the high sticker price of EV models on the market today. In the limited cases where EV charging companies have been able to attract electric rideshare drivers to their public charging stations, it has resulted in congestion during peak times, making access to the one or two plugs difficult for other EV owners.
We need utilization that doesn’t interfere with public use: high overnight utilization and charging stations large enough to provide guaranteed public access during peak demand.
Chicken and the Egg: Electric Rideshare + Fast Charging Superhubs
By combining our own fleet of Revel-owned electric rideshare vehicles with our Superhubs, we’re able to build the infrastructure that cities need to electrify today.
Superhubs reduce per-charger development costs and Revel’s electric rideshare provides the utilization needed from day one. Because we’re decoupling charger utilization from broad consumer EV adoption, we can accelerate that buildout of Superhubs. Once Superhubs are built, consumers will be more comfortable buying an EV knowing that convenient, 24/7 access to fast charging infrastructure exists.
Rideshare is the chicken, Superhub is the egg. Or maybe it’s the other way around. We haven’t decided on that one yet.
