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Volta Charging, the company that utilizes a freemium EV charging business model, may end up as a significant winner from President Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure package.
For those unfamiliar with Volta Charging’s business model, the company seeks to place its charging stations in densely populated areas. Moreover, in a departure from the industry norm, Volta’s charging stations double as advertising platforms for its partner brands. In return for placing advertisements within the line of sight of its customers, Volta is able to provide a freemium EV charging plan, where the charging for the first few minutes is free for customers. This allows the company to not only provide charging service at a very attractive price point but also diversify its revenue sources. The company is set to go public soon by merging with the SPAC Tortoise Acquisition Corp. II (NYSE:SNPR).
Volta Charging believes that around $500 billion, equivalent to the revenue of 150,000 gas stations across the US, is up for grabs as the ongoing transition to EVs progresses. Given the company’s unique freemium operational model, it hopes to capture a sizable chunk of this pie. As an illustration, Volta expects its revenue to increase from $47 million in 2021 to $826 million by 2025. Moreover, the company expects to become EBITDA positive in 2023.
This brings us to the crux of the matter. President Biden unveiled key details regarding his $2 trillion infrastructure package yesterday. Crucially, the plan seeks to facilitate the ownership of American-made EVs across the US by proposing an allocation of $174 billion for point-of-sale consumer rebates, tax incentives, and grants. The package also includes tax incentives for entrepreneurs to encourage the establishment of at least 500,000 EV charging stations in the US by 2030. Finally, this figure also includes the cost of replacing 50,000 diesel transit vehicles as well as the postal service fleet with corresponding EVs. While Volta Charging will benefit from the dedicated incentives for EV charging service providers, it also stands to gain second-order benefits from an increase in EV ownership. Its unique tiered cost model makes it attractive to consumers which, in turn, is expected to translate into a healthy uptake.
However, readers should note that the infrastructure plan is far from certain at this stage, with robust opposition from Republicans and moderate Democrats. Nonetheless, most of these differences center on the financing of the plan and not on its actual incentives. Consequently, the crux of the plan is very likely to come online soon. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that Tortoise Acquisition II shares – that serve as a proxy for Volta Charging in the pre-merger phase – are rallying in the pre-market session today.
