Most UK dealer groups have little to no visibility into what EV charging is actually costing them, and for one group that added up to over £300,000 a year in unattributed costs. This blog covers why that happens, what it takes to fix it, and how some dealer groups are turning their charging infrastructure into a new revenue stream as well.
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75% of dealer groups we surveyed don't currently track the source of their EV charging energy costs. For most dealerships, EV charging has no owner as a line item, and gets absorbed into the site's overall energy bill without being separated out. As EV volumes across new, used, service and handover fleets continue to rise, that gap in EV charging cost management is becoming an expensive one to ignore.
To put a number on it: one of our dealer group customers discovered they had lost over £300,000 in unattributed EV charging costs. They knew they were spending it; what they couldn't tell their finance director was which department had spent it, which vehicles it had gone into, or how much of it could have been recovered.
EV charging costs are already spread across every part of a typical dealership, all drawing from the same site electricity supply:
Without session-level data, there's no way to separate one from another. A vehicle collecting a service loan and a demo car left plugged in overnight look identical on the energy bill with no breakdown.
This is the core problem with EV charging cost management at most dealer groups: the cost exists, it's just invisible. The electricity is being used for legitimate business reasons but the issue is that nobody can say which department was responsible for how much of it, or whether it was justified.
Once a cost can't be attributed, it can't be recovered either. If a customer's service loan or a demo drive consumed the electricity, that cost should sit with the department responsible for it, not get absorbed centrally. Without visibility, cost centres can't defend their own budgets, and finance can't build an accurate picture of true EV operating costs.
The problem also compounds over time. As EV volumes grow, so does the electricity load, and the size of the gap grows with it. What looks like a manageable, absorbed cost today can become a much harder conversation with your finance director in twelve months. Dealer groups that build EV charging cost allocation into their operations now are the ones who won't be having that conversation.
Answering "is this costing us more than it should" requires three pieces of information for every charging session:
Most dealer groups don't currently capture any of the three.
EV charging cost allocation, tagging a charge to a vehicle, department and cost centre before it even begins, is what turns one undifferentiated energy bill into an itemised, explainable breakdown. Once that data exists, recovering costs from the right department, or building a case for further investment, becomes a matter of pulling a report rather than guessing.
For most dealer groups, this level of visibility isn't something you build manually, it comes from the software already managing your charging infrastructure. A charge point management system designed for automotive dealer groups should be able to capture session data automatically: which charger, which vehicle, which department, without adding manual admin to already stretched service and facilities teams.
This is also where a charge point management system pays for itself beyond cost visibility. The same infrastructure and session data can support public access, bookings, and preferential rates for customers, turning underused chargers into a source of revenue rather than a pure cost, if you choose to go that far.
Practical steps to stop absorbing EV charging costs
A few starting points for any dealer group looking to get ahead of this:
Audit what you actually know today. Can you currently say what proportion of your energy bill is EV charging, or is it a single undifferentiated number?
Map where charging happens across the business, PDI, service loans, demo vehicles, courtesy cars and staff charging all draw from the same supply, but rarely get separated out.
Check whether your existing chargers and charge point management system can capture session-level data, by vehicle, department and cost centre.
Decide who should own the recovered cost internally, and build the reporting that lets you make that case with evidence rather than estimates.
Once you have visibility into what your EV charging is costing, there's a further opportunity worth considering: turning that same infrastructure into a source of revenue. Some dealer groups are charging customers directly for the energy used during a service or MOT, rather than absorbing it as a cost. Others are opening their chargers to the public network entirely, setting up bookings, access rules and opening times so retail EV drivers can use them inside of dealership hours or within what works best for your site.
Arnold Clark have taken this approach, opening their charging infrastructure to the public, appearing on roaming maps, and building a booking system that offers customers preferential rates alongside the 24/7 driver support helpline required under Public Charge Point Regulations. Read more in our Arnold Clark case study.
The £300,000 figure reflects a structural gap most UK dealer groups currently have in EV charging cost management, not an outlier. If you don't currently know how much of your energy bill is going into EV charging, or which department is responsible for it, you're not alone, but it's a gap worth closing before EV volumes make it a bigger one.
We're running a free webinar on Thursday 22nd October at 2pm looking at exactly this problem in more depth, including a live demo of Session Cost Allocation and a case study from Jamie Green at Arnold Clark on how they've approached EV charging infrastructure. Register here.