Why So Many EV Charging Projects Fail — And What It Takes to Get Them Right

At Brightmerge, we speak with many people, in a variety of roles, all involved in the transition to EVs.

Whether we talk with operations managers, infrastructure decision-makers, or finance directors about how to electrify fleet or public EV charging infrastructure at scale, it’s clear that all face numerous challenges. To name just a few: missed ROI targets, unreliable charging networks, excessive demand-charge bills, and underutilized stations undermine both budgets and financial performance goals. While the challenges each faces may vary, in the high-pressure circumstances that they all face where delays and cost overruns have real consequences - from shareholder scrutiny to lost public trust - these professionals are ultimately accountable for fleet performance, and they know all too well the importance of avoiding costly missteps.

In particular, in our experience with EPCs and CPOs, we’ve come across five pillars for risk mitigation that seem to be shared by all we speak with, regardless of project size, or whether the project is for fleet electrification or public charging infrastructure:

1. Rigorous, upfront financial modeling;

2. Data-driven utilization forecasting;

3. Grid-aware smart charging strategies;

4. Agile, ongoing infrastructure planning and asset optimization;

5. Financialization of sustainability.

In this article, we’ll briefly present how overlooking each of these 5 pillars can lead to project failure - and how applying best practices mitigates risk and drives reliable outcomes. We’ll also explain very briefly how Brightmerge helps address the challenge to help clarify our approach to helping our clients and partners achieve the recommended best practice. In the follow-up articles we’ll be preparing and releasing over the coming weeks, we’ll dive more deeply into each pillar (and if you’d like to share your experience, please speak with us!).

-----

1. Financial Modeling That’s Too Shallow, Too Late

The Problem: Many fleets leap into charger deployment with static spreadsheets that omit location-specific variables (e.g., local tariffs, demand charges, grant structures). These simplified models fail to capture the operational and financial complexity of charging infrastructure, a domain where even small miscalculations can compound over years.

Why It Fails: Without dynamic, scenario-based models, organizations discover mid-project that their IRR falls short when real-world factors (peak prices, actual utilization, grid upgrade costs) enter the mix¹. Once a project is underway, the sunk costs make it politically and financially difficult to course-correct, leading to expensive retrofits or compromised ROI.

Best Practice: Conduct comprehensive financial due-diligence upfront, using tools that simulate multiple scenarios over a 10- to 15-year horizon. This allows decision-makers to test assumptions, account for volatility, and align investments with actual business performance targets

Brightmerge’s Role: Brightmerge generates robust, site-specific business cases with clear IRR, ROI, and payback periods in days rather than weeks, helping stakeholders decide where to invest before breaking ground. The speed and accuracy of these models empower decision-makers to act with confidence, even under aggressive timelines.

2. Underestimating Charger Utilization Planning

The Problem: Deploying chargers without analyzing driver behavior, dwell times, and vehicle turnover leads to overbuilt or underbuilt sites. Misjudging how vehicles interact with charging assets directly impacts operational efficiency and user satisfaction.

Why It Fails: Overcapacity wastes capital; undercapacity creates queueing and downtime, frustrating users and eroding revenue². For commercial fleets, such misalignments can also disrupt delivery schedules, lower asset utilization, and increase operational costs.

Best Practice: Leverage granular, data-driven demand forecasts that incorporate local traffic patterns, shift schedules, and growth projections. These insights can reveal hidden demand pockets, seasonal variations, or behavioral patterns that inform smarter siting and sizing decisions.

Brightmerge’s Role: Brightmerge’s utilization analytics predict charging session counts, peak loads, and station dwell times, enabling the right number and types of chargers per site. This ensures that infrastructure investments are aligned with expected throughput, reducing the risk of idle assets or customer dissatisfaction.

3. Ignoring Grid Realities in Smart Charging

The Problem: Assuming unlimited grid access and flat tariffs overlooks demand-charge spikes and local transformer constraints³. Many project teams fail to engage utilities early or underestimate the time, cost, and complexity of securing interconnection.

Why It Fails: Unexpected interconnection fees and high utility bills due to demand charges can wipe out project economics⁴. In some cases, delays in grid upgrades can stall entire deployments, straining relationships with partners and stakeholders.

Best Practice: Integrate smart charging strategies that align load with utility price signals and grid capacity. This includes demand charge mitigation, load shifting, and local generation or storage integration, all of which can materially improve project outcomes.

Brightmerge’s Role: Brightmerge models time-of-use tariffs, battery storage options, and on-site renewable integration to shave peaks and minimize demand-charge impact. By doing so, it enables fleets to future-proof their infrastructure against rising energy costs and volatile utility rates.

4. Static Planning in a Dynamic Operational Environment

The Problem: Traditional site plans are finalized once and never revisited, locking in configurations that may misalign with evolving operational needs. This approach reflects a legacy mindset borrowed from infrastructure planning in more static sectors, but it doesn’t hold up in today’s rapidly changing electrification landscape.

Why It Fails: Route changes, fleet growth, and new technologies render static plans obsolete, leading to stranded assets or capacity shortages⁵. As a result, fleets either overpay to retrofit outdated sites or are forced to abandon them entirely, wasting capital and time.

Best Practice: Adopt a living-system approach by continually modeling, stress-testing, and optimizing infrastructure. This enables operators to adapt in real-time, ensuring infrastructure always reflects the current and future needs of the fleet.

Brightmerge’s Role: Brightmerge’s platform enables ongoing scenario analysis, allowing updates for new vehicle types, route alterations, and tariff changes without starting from scratch. This dynamic planning capability provides long-term flexibility without incurring repeated consulting or engineering costs.

5. Opportunity: Financial Performance Goals -  Financializing Sustainability

The Opportunity: Renewable-powered EV charging can generate carbon credits, renewable energy certificates (RECs), and regulatory compliance value⁶. These incentives can turn sustainability from a cost center into a revenue generator if properly accounted for in project design.

Why It’s Overlooked: Sustainability is often siloed in ESG reports rather than integrated into project finance models. This leads to missed opportunities to monetize environmental impact and to strengthen the financial appeal of infrastructure investments.

Best Practice: Embed carbon credit and REC revenue streams into upfront financial models alongside energy and equipment costs. Doing so not only boosts the internal rate of return but also builds a business case that resonates with boards, city councils, and CFOs who increasingly prioritize climate-aligned investments.

Brightmerge’s Role: Brightmerge incorporates sustainability credits into business cases, boosting IRR and aligning with corporate decarbonization mandates. This ensures that the full economic potential of low-carbon infrastructure is captured and communicated to internal stakeholders and external investors alike.

-----

Conclusion: Planning as the Cornerstone of EV Success

For operational and financial leaders - meaning those accountable for TCO, uptime reliability, and ROI - electrification demands meticulous planning. It is no longer sufficient to deploy chargers and hope they perform; success depends on carefully aligning capital, capacity, and carbon considerations from the outset. By embracing dynamic financial models, data-driven utilization forecasts, grid-aware charging strategies, agile infrastructure updates, and sustainability-driven revenue streams, fleets can transform charging networks from risky investments into reliable assets.

These five pillars form the foundation of a resilient and profitable electrification strategy - one that evolves with technology, markets, and mission. Modern digital tools make this level of precision feasible in days rather than months - ensuring that your EV projects deliver on both financial and environmental promises. Investing in this kind of upfront intelligence is no longer optional; it’s the price of success in an increasingly competitive and resource-constrained mobility landscape.

If you’d like to discuss your project with us, just click here to schedule a call.