More chargers won’t fix your utilization problem. We are post Coverage Wars. But what now?

The elvah H2 2025 Report (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) shows HPC utilization at 9.4%. Up from 7.1%. Progress. But still single digits. And the reason isn’t lack of chargers.

Nicholai Sheridan Jørgensen, Managing Director of Mer Norway, said it perfectly: „We are post coverage wars.“

CPOs optimize coverage. Customers optimize confidence.
CPOs deploy chargers based on geography, grid capacity, and traffic forecasts. Logical. Measurable. But customers don’t choose chargers based on location alone. They choose based on trust. Will it work? Is pricing reasonable? Is it accessible when I need it? Will it meet my expectations?

The gap between what you optimize and what customers optimize is what I call friction. And friction kills repeat usage. Trust enables it.

The Trust Formula
Trust = Reliability × Reasonable Pricing × Accessibility × Expectation Consistency
It’s multiplicative, not additive. One broken variable and customers don’t return. They find another charger, another network, another solution. Your coverage metrics look good. Their confidence doesn’t.

Low utilization is often a confidence problem, not a demand problem.
When utilization doesn’t increase, the easy answer is „the EV market isn’t growing fast enough.“ But that’s not the full picture. The question isn’t why more people aren’t buying EVs. It’s why customers who already have EVs aren’t using your chargers more than once.

Post coverage wars, utilization isn’t bought. It’s earned.
Through reliability. Through consistency. Through better service. And that’s the hard part. Deploying chargers isn’t.