British electric charger companies are asking rivals to buy them as they run out of cash amid rising costs and intense competition, according to industry bosses.
A wave of mergers and acquisitions is likely to shrink the number of charge point operators from as many as 150 to a market dominated by five or six players, said Asif Ghafoor, a co-founder of Be.EV, a charging company backed by Octopus Energy.
Investors rushed to pour money into green technologies and the electric car industry during the pandemic, fuelled by cheap borrowing. Yet now with intense competition, rising costs, and delays to government funding, some charger companies are running short of cash and investors are looking for a return on their investments, according to several people in the industry.
Simon Smith, the chief executive of Voltempo, which focuses on charge points for lorries, said: “Charging is getting more capital intensive and more competitive at the same time. That means two things decide who survives: the right sites and fast utilisation. If volumes do not ramp [up], payback stretches, assets get stranded and consolidation follows. That is just infrastructure market logic.”
The number of chargers installed in the UK has soared in recent years as companies raced to win market share. There were nearly 88,000 charge points across 45,000 UK locations at the end of 2025, according to the data company Zapmap.
Many charge point operators are making money, but others have installed points in anticipation of future demand, meaning they do not yet earn enough to cover costs, even if they are likely to as the number of electric cars on British roads rises rapidly.
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