Matthias SpeicherIn short
From the operator’s side there are countless charging categories. From the customer’s side there are only two. Journey charging means I have to stop because the battery forces me to, and the only job is to get me to my destination. Destination charging means I stop for an entirely different reason, and the charging happens alongside. Confuse the two and you build the wrong hardware in the wrong place. And everything that truly sets EVs apart, bidirectional charging, vehicle pooling, needs destination logic.
Ask operators and charging splits into many categories. Highway charging, urban charging, depot charging, destination charging, home charging. All correct, all useful for planning. But it’s the supplier’s map. Think from the customer and only two situations remain. And those two decide everything that follows.
The two situations
Journey charging. I have to stop and charge because the battery forces me to. Without charging I won’t reach my actual destination. The only job of the charging session in that moment is to get me to my destination. Every minute of active charging time is a minute I didn’t want to spend. Here fast technology shines, 800-volt systems or flash charging. The faster the better, because faster really does mean better in this context.
Destination charging. I want to stop, but for a completely different reason. My state of charge is not why I’m here. I’m here to shop, to work, to sleep, whatever it is. The charging happens alongside, entirely passive, without my noticing. The job isn’t to get me to my destination. The job is to take away the worry. I have nothing to do with the charging. It just happens.
Between them lies a grey area, and it matters more than it first seems. For many people this too is journey charging: I’m on the road but have to take a break anyway, use the toilet, eat something. Strictly by the definition above, that’s actually destination charging, or more precisely the coupling of both. I stop for something else, and the charging runs alongside.
And this is exactly where it gets decisive. It’s no longer about charging as fast as possible. It’s about how long the thing I stopped for takes, and how long the charging takes. It’s a kind of matchmaking between activity time and charging time. Optimise for maximum speed here and you make the same mistake as at the furniture store, only in reverse. Because if the charging finishes before the break does, it turns back into an active task. I have to move the car, handle the activities one after another, charging and break in sequence instead of in parallel.
The beauty of this case is that both can run in parallel. The premier class is the blend-in. The charging fits so exactly into the length of the break that I don’t experience it as a separate act at all. Not as fast as possible, but as fitting as possible. Get that fit right and you turn a forced stop into one that feels as if you’d have stopped there anyway.
Why the distinction is strategic
Once you keep these two situations clean, a technical question turns into a strategic one. Take two real cases.
At a furniture store location, old chargers were recently removed, and the debate immediately began, 50 or 150 kilowatts, given only four parking spots. At other locations a supermarket chain is installing 300-kilowatt fast chargers in front of its stores.
In both cases I don’t ask what’s technically possible, but what the customer actually wants to do here. A furniture store visit takes at least an hour. Nobody drives there to charge and then thinks, well, might as well grab a shelf while I’m charging. Put the wrong, too-fast charger there and the car finishes before the owner finishes shopping. The spot gets blocked, the customer leaves earlier or doesn’t plug in at all, because they know it won’t be worth it. Charging then doesn’t support the core business, it ignores it.
Is charging the business or the add-on
For retail there’s a fundamental choice in this. Is charging a standalone business that happens to have my shop next door? Someone who comes to charge might also buy. Or is charging an amenity that strengthens my core business? Someone who comes to shop might also charge.
Both at once isn’t a strategy, it’s a plan without direction. A retailer lives off sales, not off charging sessions. Someone who comes to shop rarely arrives with a nearly empty battery. They don’t have to charge, they just want a top-up. That means little energy per session, poor utilisation, and a charging investment that simply doesn’t add up. The charger is too fast for the customer and for the car’s state of charge.
So the right tool doesn’t start with the question of which charger I install. It starts with the question of why my customer comes to me at all.
And another choice is hidden in this that’s often overlooked. A retailer can also not run the charging park themselves, but commission a CPO to do it. That sounds convenient, but it carries a built-in conflict of interest. The retailer wants footfall and the longest possible dwell time, because longer dwell time means more sales in the store. The CPO wants the opposite, the highest possible utilisation and thus throughput, because they earn per session. One wants the customer to stay, the other wants the spot free again quickly. Commission a CPO without resolving this conflict first and two partners work against each other at the same site. The two have to find each other first, align their goals, so the calculation works for both. Otherwise each optimises their own metric and the customer is left with the friction in between.
Why what’s special about the EV needs destination logic
There’s a further reason this distinction is more than site planning. The capabilities that truly set the EV apart from a combustion car presuppose destination logic.
Bidirectional charging, feeding electricity back into the home or the grid, is one of the EV’s greatest strengths. But it needs planned, regular charging. Whoever charges in a planned and regular way can feed back in a planned and regular way. Whoever stands at a fast charger for five minutes every few days can’t.
The same holds for pooling vehicles as an energy resource. To bundle vehicles for bidirectional services and grid stability, you need predictable charging cycles. Knowing which vehicle is where, when, for how long, and at what state of charge allows intelligent control and feed-back. That only works when charging is integrated into everyday life, not when it’s a deliberate detour.
Put differently, the future of the EV as part of the energy system hangs on destination charging. The journey logic of the petrol station can’t deliver it. It gets the driver to the destination, nothing more.
The order that counts
Whoever charges at home doesn’t think about charging. Whoever charges on the road wants to arrive, not charge. Whoever charges at their destination ideally doesn’t notice it at all. Three situations, three completely different jobs.
Understand the customer’s situation first, then decide the hardware. Do it the other way round and you have no strategy, just a hope. The two questions, journey or destination, an operator has to answer before any technical decision. After that the hardware almost follows by itself.