Most RFPs for EV charging fail the same way: they ask for a price per charger, receive six bids built on six different assumptions, and leave the owner to guess which one is cheapest. The fix is to decide what you need to compare before you send the request, and to make every bidder answer on your terms instead of theirs.
Short answer: Require five-year total cost on identical line items, a written uptime definition with a measurement method and a remedy, a security and payment-data disclosure, access to your own session data, and a support term that matches the contract. Borrow the federal NEVI definitions as a starting point, and understand that they bind funded stations, not your private site, until you write them into your own agreement.
This is the property-owner side of the table. If you already have a Charging-as-a-Service proposal in hand, read Charging-as-a-Service contract terms alongside this checklist; this piece covers how to ask for bids, that one covers what to negotiate in one.
Start with what every bidder must be told
A bid can only be as good as the brief. Give every bidder the same site facts and ask them to state their assumptions in writing.
- The number and type of ports you want (Level 2, DC fast, or a mix) and whether you want room to add more.
- The electrical capacity available, and whether you want the bidder to price any panel, service or utility work or leave it to a separate contractor. See electrical infrastructure assessment.
- Who the drivers are (employees, tenants, the public, a fleet) and the hours the chargers must be available.
- The ownership models you will consider: you own and operate, a provider owns and operates, or a hybrid. Own, operate, turnkey or hybrid explains how they differ, and you can ask bidders to price more than one.
- Whether the project uses public money. If it does, federal funding can bring Buy America and prevailing-wage rules that change the spec; procurement and long-lead equipment covers them.
Ask each bidder to list what their price excludes. An unlisted exclusion is the most common reason a low bid turns into a change order.
Ask for five-year total cost, not a sticker price
Require each bid to break its cost into the same lines so you can add them up:
- Hardware and installation, including any make-ready work they are pricing.
- Network and software fees, per port and per year, and whether they rise.
- Payment processing fees and who keeps any revenue after them.
- Warranty and maintenance: what is covered, for how long, and what the response time is.
- Utility costs: who pays the electric bill, and what rate the bidder assumed.
- End-of-term costs: removal, buyout or replacement.
Then run each bid through the same model. The commercial ROI snapshot lets you enter the cost lines, pricing and utilization for each option and compare the results, and building a realistic ROI model explains which inputs matter most. Treat a bidder's own revenue projection as an assumption to test, not a fact.
For an owned-hardware bid against a Charging-as-a-Service bid, put both on the same footing. The owned bid shows your upfront cost, ongoing fees and the revenue you keep. The service bid shows little or no upfront cost and a revenue share. Compare what you receive and pay over five years in each case, including what happens at the end of the term, rather than comparing the up-front number to zero.
Define uptime in the document, not in the sales deck
"99 percent uptime" means nothing until the contract says what counts as up, how it is measured, and what happens when it is missed. The federal NEVI rule is a good template because it answers those questions in public text.
Under 23 CFR 680.116(b), a state or other direct recipient has to ensure that each charging port averages greater than 97 percent uptime a year. The regulation sets out the terms:
- A port is "up" when its hardware and software are both online and available for use, or in use, and it successfully dispenses electricity at the minimum power level the rule requires.
- Uptime is measured per port, not per site, and calculated monthly for the previous twelve months.
- Outage time is counted against the full year (525,600 minutes), minus time caused by listed events outside the operator's control: electric utility service interruptions, failure to charge due to the vehicle's fault, scheduled maintenance, vandalism, and natural disasters, plus hours outside the station's stated hours of operation. The operator has to be able to show the port would otherwise have worked.
A few things to carry into your own RFP:
- Say per port. A site where one of four ports is dead all month can still look good on a site-level average.
- Define "available." The federal wording treats a port that is online but fails to dispense power as down. A port that shows "available" in the app but will not start a session is the failure drivers actually notice.
- List the exclusions yourself. Scheduled maintenance is excluded under the federal rule; decide whether you will allow it, how much notice you require, and whether it has a cap.
- State the remedy. Credits, fee reductions, a right to terminate after repeated misses, or a repair deadline. We could not find a published benchmark for how large a penalty should be, so we are not suggesting a number. Ask your own counsel and your bidders what is reasonable for your site.
- Require the data. Ask how the bidder will report port-level uptime to you and how often.
Remember what the 97 percent figure is. It is a requirement on NEVI-funded stations. Nothing in it applies to a privately funded site unless your contract says so, and a vendor offering a different number is not violating a rule. A project covered by Part 680, such as one funded through NEVI, is held to it through the state or other recipient, and the contract cannot waive it; confirm with the funding agency whether your award is covered.
Require a security and payment-data disclosure
Networked chargers take payments, store account data and connect to your network and the grid. Your RFP should ask how the bidder handles that, in writing.
The NEVI rule does not leave security to the vendor's discretion. Under 23 CFR 680.106(h), a funded state has to implement physical and cybersecurity strategies, and the regulation lists cybersecurity topics those strategies may cover: user identity and access management, cryptographic agility and support for multiple public key infrastructures, monitoring and detection, incident prevention and handling, configuration, vulnerability and software update management, third-party cybersecurity testing and certification, and continuity of operation when the charger loses its connection to the network. On consumer data, 680.106(l) adds that chargers and networks should be compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard for cardholder data and that operators must take reasonable measures to safeguard consumer data.
Turn that list into questions each bidder must answer:
- How are software updates delivered and who approves them?
- Has the product been tested or certified by an independent third party, and can you see the result?
- What happens to charging when the charger loses its connection to the network?
- How is payment data handled, and does the system comply with PCI DSS?
- Who do you call about a security incident, and what does the bidder commit to tell you and when?
Ask for the answers as documents, not assurances. A bidder who cannot produce them has told you something.
Make sure you can get your own data
Session data is how you check the uptime promise, understand your revenue and move to another provider later. Ask what you receive, in what format, how often, and whether it stays yours if the contract ends.
For a sense of what a complete data set looks like, the NEVI rule requires states to ensure that funded stations' data is submitted to FHWA each quarter, by port: session start and end times, error codes for unsuccessful sessions, energy dispensed, peak session power, payment method, port uptime and outage minutes, and the duration of each outage (23 CFR 680.112(a)). States must also ensure station and port information, status and pricing are available free to third-party developers through an application programming interface (680.116(c)). That data flows to FHWA and developers, not to you, which is why a site host has to contract for its own access. You do not have to require all of that, but if a bidder cannot produce session-level data at all, you cannot audit what you are paying for.
Also ask about portability. If the chargers can talk to other network software, you can change providers without replacing hardware; if they cannot, you are tied to the provider that sold them. Ask the bidder to state which communication standards the hardware supports and to put the answer in the contract. Software platforms for commercial charging covers the differences.
Match the support term to the contract
The NEVI rule requires funded chargers to be maintained in compliance for not less than five years from the initial date of operation (680.106(i)) and requires that the workforce installing, maintaining and operating chargers have appropriate licenses, certifications and training (680.106(j)). For a private site, make the same asks explicit:
- A warranty and maintenance term at least as long as your contract or your payback period.
- The credentials required of whoever installs and services the equipment.
- A response time for outages, in hours, with a named escalation path.
- What happens to support if the provider is acquired or stops operating. The Ample collapse lessons show why this belongs in the RFP.
Score the bids, then read the contract
Decide your scoring before the bids arrive, so a polished presentation does not set the weights for you. A simple approach: assign points to five-year cost, uptime terms, security disclosure, data access, support and experience, and weight them according to what matters for your site. Write the weights into the RFP. Bidders then know what you value, and you can defend your choice.
Finally, treat the RFP response as a draft of the contract, not the contract. Require that the final agreement incorporate the bidder's stated assumptions, uptime definition and disclosures, and have counsel who works with commercial property agreements review it, not just the provider's paperwork.
Last factually verified: November 1, 2026 against the electronic Code of Federal Regulations text of 23 CFR Part 680 as currently published at ecfr.gov (sections 680.106, 680.112 and 680.116, read November 1, 2026). Section 680.116(b) (uptime above 97 percent per port, the monthly calculation, the 525,600-minute formula and the listed exclusions), 680.106(h) (the security strategies and the topics listed), 680.106(i) (five-year maintenance), 680.106(l) (consumer data and PCI DSS), 680.106(j) (qualified workforce) and 680.112(a) (quarterly data) are paraphrased from that text. We did not find a published benchmark for penalty size in uptime clauses, so none is given. This article is general information, not legal advice. evcharginghelp.com has no relationship with any bidder or vendor mentioned.
evcharginghelp.com is editorially independent and receives no compensation from any company mentioned.