Matthias Speicher

I build systems that win

The Phase Mismatch: Why the Charging Market Stays Fragmented

Apps break mid-session. Chargers show available but aren’t. Prices change without notice. Support takes hours to reach when you’re standing in the rain at 11 PM. Customer experience in 2026.

Many interpret this as growing pains of a young market. They’re wrong. What we’re seeing isn’t a maturity problem in the details. It’s a structural phase mismatch.

The Symptoms: What Customers Actually Experience

The charging market looks dynamic from the outside. New operators emerge. Apps get built. Roaming networks expand. Subscription models launch. Charging speeds increase.

But customer reality tells a different story:

Apps exist, but create no value. They’re technically functional but completely interchangeable. One app looks like every other app. Same UI patterns, same features, same friction. Customers experience them as gatekeeping—mandatory steps to access something that should be straightforward. The app doesn’t solve a problem. It is the problem.

Roaming works, but at what cost? Access to more networks sounds good until you see the pricing. Same charger, four apps, four prices. None set by the actual operator. Customers don’t understand who earns what or why the same kWh costs differently depending on which app they opened. This isn’t transparency. It’s opacity at scale.

Subscriptions feel like protection rackets. Ad-hoc prices are high enough that a subscription seems necessary. But subscriptions don’t deliver added value—they protect you from the operator’s own pricing structure. That’s backwards. A subscription should work like a loyalty program. Instead, it works like insurance against your own service provider.

Chargers go offline unpredictably. Available on the map doesn’t mean available in reality. Start failures happen without explanation. Sessions abort mid-charge. Error codes mean nothing to drivers. And when it fails, there’s no immediate recourse.

Billing is inconsistent. Invoices arrive late. Line items don’t match expectations. Customers can’t verify if what they paid matches what they used. Trust erodes with every unclear statement.

Support is unreachable when it matters. The moment you need help—standing at a charger that won’t start, in the rain, at night—support is a phone tree, a chatbot, or a ticket system. Real help arrives hours or days later. By then, you’ve driven somewhere else.

This isn’t occasional friction. This is the baseline experience in 2026.

The Industry’s Diagnosis: Growing Pains

Most operators explain this as temporary. A young market finding its footing. Growing pains that will resolve as infrastructure matures.

The logic goes:

  • More charging stations will improve availability
  • Better apps will improve user experience
  • More roaming partners will improve accessibility
  • More subscription options will improve pricing transparency

This diagnosis is structurally wrong.

Adding more infrastructure doesn’t fix fragmentation, it multiplies it. Every new site built without standardized operating models adds complexity, not capacity. Every new app adds friction, not convenience. Every new roaming agreement adds pricing layers, not transparency.

The problem isn’t insufficient scale. It’s that the market is trying to scale something that hasn’t been industrialized yet.

The Correct Diagnosis: The Phase Mismatch

Infrastructure markets follow a predictable maturity curve. They move through distinct phases, each building on the foundation of the previous one.

The charging market is in Phase 1: Craft

  • Project-driven, not serial production
  • Every site different
  • Every hardware configuration different
  • Every tariff logic different
  • Every integration different
  • Every maintenance approach different
  • High manual intervention
  • Low repeatability
  • Unpredictable outcomes

But operators are trying to play Phase 4: Platform

  • Roaming networks
  • Apps and digital services
  • Subscription models
  • White-label solutions
  • Charging-as-a-Service
  • Multi-sided marketplace dynamics

Phase 4 mechanics require:

  • Standardized operations
  • Automated processes
  • Stable hardware performance
  • Clear end-to-end ownership
  • Low error tolerance
  • Predictable service levels

None of this exists consistently yet.

The result isn’t progress. It’s chaos at a higher abstraction level.

The Five Phases

Let’s map the maturity curve properly.

Phase 1: Craft

Characteristics:

  • Project-driven
  • Manual processes
  • Fragmented infrastructure
  • Individual solutions
  • High error rates
  • Low repeatability

This is where the charging market actually is. Every charging hub is a custom project. Hardware varies by manufacturer, firmware version, and integration requirements. Software stacks differ by operator. Maintenance schedules are reactive, not preventive. Pricing logic changes by location, time, and roaming partner. Billing systems don’t talk to each other.

Nothing is standardized. Nothing is repeatable. Everything requires manual intervention.

Phase 2: Industrialization (MISSING)

Characteristics:

  • Standardized operating models
  • Repeatable site deployments
  • End-to-end value streams
  • Automated processes
  • High reliability
  • Measurable performance
  • Utilization as steering variable

This is what’s missing. Without industrial operating models, you can’t build reliable platforms. You can’t offer consistent service. You can’t automate billing. You can’t predict performance.

Industrialization means:

  • Same hardware configurations across sites
  • Same software stack everywhere
  • Same maintenance procedures
  • Same failure recovery protocols
  • Same customer journey regardless of location
  • Predictable uptime
  • Measurable reliability

Without Phase 2, Phase 3 and 4 are impossible.

Phase 3: Digitalization

Characteristics:

  • Software-defined operations
  • Plug & Charge
  • Automated billing
  • Predictive maintenance
  • Dynamic load management
  • Remote diagnostics

This requires industrial operations as foundation. You can’t digitalize chaos. You can’t automate what isn’t repeatable. Plug & Charge only works if the underlying infrastructure is reliable enough to handle zero-friction scenarios.

Phase 4: Platform

Characteristics:

  • Interoperability
  • Multi-sided markets
  • Fleet APIs
  • Energy marketplaces
  • White-label operations
  • Revenue diversification

Platform mechanics require all previous phases working correctly. Roaming only scales if operations are standardized. Apps only add value if the service behind them is reliable. Subscriptions only work if customers trust consistent delivery.

Phase 5: Service

Characteristics:

  • Charging-as-a-Service
  • Mobility-as-a-Service
  • Invisible charging
  • Autonomous integration
  • Full value stacking

This is the end state. Charging disappears into background infrastructure. Customers don’t think about it. Systems handle it automatically. But you can’t skip to this. You have to build through the phases sequentially.

Why Apps, Roaming, and Platforms Fail

Let’s trace the failures back to the phase mismatch.

Apps Don’t Fail Because of UX

Apps are technically functional. They authenticate, they show locations, they process payments. But they create no real value because the infrastructure behind them isn’t industrial.

What customers experience:

  • Charger shown as available but offline when they arrive
  • Charging session starts, then aborts without explanation
  • Pricing displayed doesn’t match final invoice
  • Error codes with no context
  • Support requires opening the app while standing at a broken charger

The app can’t fix these problems. It can only surface them. And in doing so, it becomes associated with the failure rather than the solution.

Industrial infrastructure would mean:

  • Real-time availability status (not cached data)
  • Predictable session start
  • Transparent pricing locked at session start
  • Automatic failure recovery
  • Proactive support triggered by system failures

Without that foundation, the app is just a layer of friction on top of unreliable operations.

Roaming Doesn’t Fail Because of APIs

Technically, roaming works. OCPP exists. OCPI exists. Interfaces function. But roaming multiplies complexity instead of reducing it because operational standards don’t exist.

What happens in practice:

  • Different operators have different quality levels
  • Different hardware handles sessions differently
  • Different pricing structures stack on top of each other
  • Different error modes with different recovery procedures
  • Different support systems with different response times

A customer using roaming navigates:

  • Operator A’s infrastructure quality
  • Operator B’s pricing logic
  • Platform C’s roaming markup
  • App D’s authentication flow

When something breaks, no one has clear ownership. Support tickets get passed between parties. Resolution takes days because the systems weren’t built to interoperate—they were adapted to interoperate.

Industrial roaming would mean:

  • Standardized site configurations
  • Consistent hardware behavior
  • Unified pricing logic
  • Clear failure ownership
  • Single support point of contact

Without industrialization, roaming is just cross-network access to fragmented operations.

Platforms Don’t Fail Because of Features

Platform operators want to abstract complexity. They want to offer:

  • Unified access across networks
  • Single payment method
  • Consistent pricing
  • Reliable availability
  • Seamless experience

But you can’t abstract what doesn’t have structure. You can’t build a platform layer on top of chaos.

The platform attempts to:

  • Normalize different hardware behaviors (but hardware isn’t normalized)
  • Aggregate pricing (but pricing logic varies by site, time, and roaming partner)
  • Guarantee availability (but sites go offline unpredictably)
  • Provide unified support (but ownership is fragmented)

The platform becomes a complexity aggregator, not a complexity reducer.

You can’t scale chaos intentionally. But chaos scales efficiently on its own.

AFIR Meets Reality

Into this immature structure, regulators introduced AFIR (Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation).

AFIR requirements are all requirements for an industrialized system:

  • Unified payment systems (card payment at all stations)
  • Transparent pricing (displayed before charging starts)
  • Easy access (no technical barriers)
  • Interoperability (any driver can use any charger)

These are correct end-state requirements. But they hit a market that’s still in craft phase.

The effect:

  • Operators forced to implement card payment without reliable billing infrastructure
  • Pricing transparency required without standardized pricing logic
  • Open access mandated without standardized authentication
  • APIs required without normalized operations

Result:

  • More error sources (payment terminals add failure modes)
  • More friction (pricing display requirements slow session start)
  • Higher OPEX (manual intervention increases)
  • Lower reliability (more systems = more failure points)

AFIR forces operators to play the end phase. But it doesn’t create the industrial foundation they need to play it well.

Chaos doesn’t get standardized. Operations do. AFIR standardized the interface, not the operations behind it.

What This Means

The strategic task in the charging market isn’t:

  • Build more stations
  • Launch better apps
  • Drop prices
  • Add features

It’s:

  • Build standardized operating models
  • Create end-to-end value streams
  • Automate repetitive processes
  • Achieve industrial reliability
  • Measure what actually matters

That’s not vision. That’s repair work.

Industrialization isn’t an option. It’s the prerequisite for everything that comes after.

Utilization Isn’t a Target, It’s a Result

Here’s the critical insight: you don’t target utilization. You earn it.

Through trust.

And trust comes from repeatable, predictable charging experiences.

Trust = Reliability × Price Fairness × Accessibility × Expectation Consistency

When one variable breaks, customers don’t return. They find another charger, another network, another solution. Your infrastructure metrics look fine. Their confidence doesn’t.

Operators measure:

  • Number of charging points deployed
  • Available capacity
  • Geographic coverage
  • Technical uptime

Customers optimize for:

  • Will it work when I arrive?
  • Will the price be fair?
  • Can I access it without friction?
  • Will it meet my expectations?

The gap between what operators optimize and what customers optimize is where utilization gets lost.

Low utilization isn’t always a demand problem. It’s usually a confidence problem.

And confidence comes from industrial operations, not from more infrastructure.

The Bottom Line

The market is trying to scale chaos. And it’s working—chaos scales efficiently.

The apps exist. The roaming networks exist. The platforms exist. But they’re all built on Phase 1 infrastructure trying to deliver Phase 4 experiences.

That’s the phase mismatch.

And until the market builds Phase 2—industrial operating models, repeatable processes, reliable performance—everything built on top will remain fragmented.

Adding more complexity doesn’t fix structural problems. It amplifies them.

Next in this series: Why customer experience isn’t a „layer on top“ but the actual structural anchor for everything else.

This is Part 1 of a 6-part series on why the charging market remains fragmented and what it would take to industrialize it.