How is California’s ChargePoint fuelling the global energy and transport transition?

Since 2007, California-based ChargePoint has been powering the transition to electric vehicles (EVs) in North America and Europe by building the world’s largest network of charging stations.¹ The company has delivered more than 133 million charges, enabling 4 billion electric miles to be driven and helping to avoid the release of some 800,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.²

Rather than selling power to end users, ChargePoint supplies EV charging hardware and software solutions to businesses that want to offer drivers access to charging stations on a subscription basis. ChargePoint’s network is sold as a scalable cloud services subscription, which includes everything fleet and commercial customers need to manage charging facilities in their car parks and depots.

For drivers, ChargePoint provides access to over 500,000 charging facilities on its own network and through its partners. Charging stations are displayed on a mobile app, which makes it easy to charge EVs while they are on the go.

ChargePoint President and CEO Pasquale Romano believes this kind of convenience will encourage more car owners to switch to EVs, reducing emissions as a result.

“I don't want to force the concept of clean transportation onto consumers”, he said. “That is not the way our business model is structured to scale with EV adoption. Using EV charging solutions should be a seamless, convenient and connected experience, and the environmental impact should be a by-product”.

That strategy has served ChargePoint well, helping it gain a 70% share of the EV charging market in North America. It has also expanded in Europe following its listing on the NYSE stock exchange in March 2021 – making it the world’s first publicly traded EV charging network.³

HSBC has supported ChargePoint’s European growth. The bank’s global capabilities and expertise in regulations and policies in different markets were valuable as ChargePoint moved into new markets.

“HSBC is committed to supporting the companies that are developing and scaling technologies that will simplify the transition to a lower carbon economy. The more charging stations that are available, the more likely consumers will be to choose electric vehicles,” said Mark Hillhouse, US Head of Sustainable Finance at HSBC.

Beyond delivering greater convenience to Europe’s EV drivers, ChargePoint’s expansion in the continent should help boost its growth prospects. EV adoption is growing faster in Western Europe than in the US – 22%⁴ of new car sales in the former are either EVs or plug-in hybrids, compared with 9%⁵ in the US.

The adoption rate in the US and the rest of the world will continue to grow, but it could take decades to catch up to Europe. “You have to basically watch an entire industry and its supply chain retool. That takes time,” explained Romano.

Given the steady ramp up in EV adoption over the coming decades, ChargePoint sees a long-term opportunity to drive cleaner transportation – and so does HSBC.