EV Charging Stations for Business: How to Choose

Everything starts with one question: how long does the vehicle stay plugged in? A van that sits at the depot from 7 pm to 7 am has twelve hours available. An AC wallbox at 7.4 kW delivers 30 to 40 km of range per hour, enough to fully charge a 50 kWh battery overnight^[1]. Stepping up to 11 or 22 kW three-phase cuts the window to 2–4 hours and becomes worthwhile as soon as vehicles turn over in half-day shifts^[2].

DC charging at 50 kW and above addresses a different use case: very short windows, where a vehicle returning from a job needs to be back on the road within the hour. Fitting an employee car park with 150 kW DC chargers is wasteful: the charger costs ten to twenty times more than a wallbox, and the car will sit plugged in all afternoon doing nothing. The AC vs DC price comparison puts a number on that gap.

Since Decree No. 2017-26 of 12 January 2017, any installation above 3.7 kW must be carried out by an electrician holding the IRVE qualification, issued by Qualifelec or AFNOR^[3]. This requirement also determines compliance with insurers and eligibility for public subsidies.

In practice: ask for the IRVE credential before signing anything, and require a certificate of conformity at project completion (with the Qualifelec number on it). A non-certified installer fitting a 22 kW charger delivers an illegal installation. If something goes wrong, the insurer can use that defect to deny any claim. When you delegate to a charge point operator (CPO), they take on that liability.

A common mistake: sizing the grid connection as the sum of all chargers. Ten 22 kW wallboxes mean 220 kW to subscribe. That is wrong, and dynamic charging corrects it: a software supervisor distributes available power across chargers based on the grid contract and the building's live consumption. Chargers throttle down when the building draws heavily and ramp back up overnight^[4].

Load shedding, which cuts or caps specific chargers, rounds out the picture and prevents the main breaker from tripping. The practical gains: a leaner grid subscription, no penalty charges, and the ability to add chargers without automatically upgrading the electrical panel. The technical requirement: chargers must communicate with the supervisor via OCPP (Open Charge Point Protocol), the de facto standard for charger-to-software communication^[5]. The IEC 15118 standard governs charger-to-vehicle communication and paves the way for Plug & Charge and V2G^[6].

A connected charger turns every charging session into actionable data, just as a fuel card turns a fill-up into an accounting entry. Identification happens via RFID badge, app, or interoperable card. Each session is then time-stamped, assigned to the driver, and exported to fleet management software. This is essential whenever vehicles are used for both business and personal trips, or when charging costs need to be billed to a separate entity.

Without a management layer, you receive a single invoice with no breakdown by driver or session. With one, you allocate every charge, set spending caps, and isolate personal use. Greenway's fleet management platform ingests these data streams alongside fuel and toll spend, giving the CFO a single, consolidated mobility cost view rather than another silo next to the petrol silo. A multi-network fuel card paired with charging completes the picture for public network use.

The regulatory backdrop: the French Mobility Law (LOM) requires company car parks with more than ten spaces to install EV-ready electrical pre-wiring (conduit, cabling routes, reserved bays), covering 20% of spaces for office buildings and 10% for commercial sites, triggered whenever the car park's electrical system is modified^[7]. Pre-wiring does not mean fitting chargers everywhere. It means laying the groundwork to add them as electrification ramps up.

On a business park, several SMBs can share infrastructure managed by an operator that installs, runs, and bills by the kWh. Each company identifies itself with an interoperable card and receives its own consumption data. This model converts capital expenditure into an operational cost. For fleets that want to stay in control, ownership still makes sense, and a mobility and charging card serves the same role as a fuel card for on-site use.

An AC 22 kW wallbox runs €1,000–1,700 ex-VAT. Fully installed, certified, connected, and grid-ready, the all-in cost per charging point is closer to €3,000–4,500 ex-VAT. A DC 50 kW charger once installed (including civil works and grid reinforcement) typically exceeds €30,000. Operating cost is what you measure over time: electricity dedicated to EV charging qualifies for a reduced VAT rate of 5.5%, and private on-site kWh cost significantly less than public network rates^[8].

To evaluate properly, look at four lines rather than the listed price: upfront investment (hardware, installation, grid works), grid subscription, cost per kWh over the asset life, and software costs (licences or operator subscription). Over ten years, a typical depreciation horizon, the subscription and usage cost outweigh the purchase price by a wide margin. The corporate mobility white paper puts charging in its broader context.