DOOH-Driven EV Charging Network Starts Rollout In Canada; Prospects Shaky Based On History Of These Efforts

September 20, 2024 by Dave Haynes

I wish them luck, but the history for companies that start capital and operating expense-intensive DOOH media networks is not great.

An Australian EV charging company has announced plans to roll out what could be 5,000 locations across Canada, offering motorists with plug-in vehicles free kilowatt hours at stations that have large digital ad screens embedded with them.

Jolt is already active in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Charging is not all free – the seven kilowatt hours provided free of charge gets a driver an estimated 40 to 50 kilometers of range, and probably less in Canada come winter, as batteries aren’t happy in Winnipeg or Edmonton come January.

The first Jolt station has been installed in Richmond Hill, a suburb of sprawling Toronto, and the plan is for several hundred more to be built in the coming months.

People like free – even if only a part of the charge is free. And Canada certainly needs more public charging station infrastructure. A report from late last year, from Natural Resources Canada, estimates Canada will need more than 400,000 public charging ports by 2035. But as of Dec. 1, 2023, there were 10,425 charging stations and 25,246 charging ports across the vast country. It’s probably not too bad at all in big cities like Toronto and Vancouver, but where I live (Halifax, a city of roughly 500,000) is range-anxiety central. There are 124 public charging station ports (Level 2 and Level 3) within 15 km of the city center.

This is my only EV 🙂

So the need is there, and more infrastructure will be welcomed, but I can’t imagine the sole business model is ad revenue. This looks more like a discount, and if motorists make the effort to stop and plug in, they’re probably going to keep charging once the free kilowatt hours are used up. So Jolt is getting charging revenue and the free hours are loss leader-ish.

As noted up top, the ad business model is a tough one. High-bright outdoor-rated LCD displays are very expensive, if they’re any good … even before layering in costly charging components. Canadian electricity rates can be eye-watering. And the screens have one-to-one audiences – like a few sets of eyeballs per hour in suburban lots, not 1,000s on busy downtown sidewalks. It looks, though, like Jolt tries to get its stations in busier urban areas, offering curbside charging on streets where traffic is slowed and there are pedestrians walking by much of the day (so more eyeballs).

It’s kinda funny that some of the Jolt hero images show motorists looking elsewhere.

Two high profile networks that went at this already have run into issues. The US company Volta tried DOOH screens with charging stations, ran into problems, and is now owned by Shell.

A German company called Numbat had a similar business model and went Tango Uniform last month.