Module 5 — The Host product

Section 1 · Tier 1 — The 60-second brief

The Host product is HiON’s product for commercial property owners. It is structurally distinct from the Franchise product: the property owner contributes zero capital and signs a long-term site agreement, while HiON brings financing, design, and operations.

1. The customer. Commercial property owners — retail centers, hotels, QSR pads, convenience operators, hospitality, mixed-use, fuel-and-service corridor real estate.
2. The capital structure. Host contributes $0 capital. HiON brings full build financing, design, V4 equipment, utility engagement, 24/7 operations, and billing.
3. What the host signs. A long-term site agreement. (Mechanics, term, fee structure — see §3.2 for the public-safe summary; specifics in the Host Site Agreement template under Joe Lewis / Kevin Hein.)
4. The timeline. Typically 9–14 months signed-to-live. Utility interconnection is the long pole.
5. The ancillary revenue policy. Any ancillary business on the host’s site (QSR, coffee, convenience, car wash, retail, hospitality) is independent of the HiON franchise. HiON does not collect royalties on ancillary revenue. The Akerman-compliant phrasing is verbatim in §3.5 and is the only acceptable wording.
6. The ideal site profile. Highway / arterial visibility, 4–12 stalls, walkable co-tenants, 3-phase commercial power, commercial zoning.
7. The cap-rate effect (host page only). $120K/yr rent at a 6.5% cap implies $1.85M of asset value; adding a 4-port Supercharger has been illustrated as a path to ~$4.2M. This example appears on the Host page and was removed from the Franchise page by the Akerman redline.
8. What the host does NOT get. Uptime guarantees, revenue guarantees, exclusivity, discounted or free charging for their guests, and pricing influence. Each one is contractually prohibited for the franchisee to offer on HiON’s behalf.

What you must be able to say without notes: the zero-capital structure; the 9–14 month timeline with utility as the long pole; the verbatim ancillary-revenue phrasing; the five-attribute ideal site profile; and the cap-rate example with the host-page-only caveat.

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Section 2 · Tier 2 — Source map

Canonical documents

Document	Path	When to open
Master context brief §§2, 3	~/HiON Franchise Group Site v2/hion-context.md	Any host product question.
Host page public copy	~/HiON Franchise Group Site v2/site-v3/COPY.md (host section)	Before quoting any host-product line externally. Where the cap-rate example survives.
Akerman redline (§7)	~/HiON Franchise Group Site v2/hion-context.md §7	Before any ancillary-revenue language goes public.
Host Site Agreement template	(not in repo) [CONFIRM]	Any conversation crossing into the legal substance of the host’s commitment. Owner: Kevin Hein.
Lease Addendum + Collateral Assignment	(not in repo) [CONFIRM]	Any conversation crossing into the franchisee-host lease (relevant when a Franchise-product franchisee leases from a third-party host).

Owners

Person	What they own for M05 questions
Will Frank	Host-page public copy and ancillary phrasing in public materials.
Joe Lewis	The host-outreach motion. Host underwriting criteria.
Jim Frank	Site sourcing where the host is also the franchisee or a strategic real-estate partner.
Kevin Hein	Any host-agreement language and the redline boundaries.
Bill O’Connor	The financing side of HiON’s commitment to host-program sites.

Live dashboards / portals

• Partner Portal — host section [CONFIRM — host-facing surfaces exist or are planned?]
• Host pipeline tracker [CONFIRM where this lives]

Related curriculum modules

• M04 — the Franchise product (structurally distinct from M05).
• M07 — the site lifecycle, including the utility long pole that drives the 9–14 month timeline.
• M08 — what HiON operates at a host-program site.
• M09 — the full redline table, including the ancillary-revenue and cap-rate phrasings.

Franchisee curriculum overlap

• [M05 · LEASE · SITE · HOST · RELATIONSHIP · LEASE · ADDENDUM](https://training.hionsuperchargers.com/curriculum/m05-lease-site-host-relationship-lease-addendum/) — the lease and Site Host mechanics from the franchisee-operator side. Useful when a host-program site is operated by a franchisee under a head-lease structure.

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Section 3 · Tier 3 — Deep dive

3.1 — The zero-capital structure: who pays for what

The defining structural fact of the Host product: the property owner contributes $0 capital (hion-context.md §2). HiON brings:

• Design. To Tesla standards. The host doesn’t engage architects or engineers for the charging facility.
• Utility engagement. HiON’s engineering team interfaces with the utility on interconnection scoping.
• Full build financing. HiON or HiON’s capital partners fund the build.
• V4 equipment. Tesla V4 Superchargers under the Master Services Agreement.
• 24/7 operations. Tesla operates the station; HiON is the operations partner. The host has no operational role.
• Billing. Network function via the Tesla app.

What the host brings:

• Land. Under a long-term site agreement.
• Cooperation on site logistics — host-side coordination on construction access, signage placement, parking impact, ICE-ing enforcement, and tenant communication.

The structural argument the executive uses with a host prospect: “You’re not entering a charging business. You’re enabling a charging facility on your property, under a long-term agreement, with HiON taking the capital risk and operational responsibility. Your role is the land and the cooperation.”

3.2 — What the host signs and what they receive

The host signs a long-term site agreement. The agreement covers (specifics in the Host Site Agreement template [CONFIRM]):

• Term. Long-term, typically commensurate with site economics — [CONFIRM specific term ranges].
• Fee structure. Rent (fixed, revenue share, hybrid, or easement/license depending on the deal — see the parallel discussion in the franchisee curriculum M05 for the spectrum of commercial structures). Public-page summary is intentionally non-specific because deals are structured per-site.
• Site access and use covenants. 24/7/365 driver access; non-interference with charging operations; ICE-ing signage and enforcement cooperation; ADA route preservation.
• Termination and renewal. Standard commercial terms; specifics in the template [CONFIRM].
• Co-branding hierarchy. HiON brand primary on the charging facility; host’s brand on its own businesses (operator-depth in franchisee curriculum M03).

The host does NOT sign the Franchise Agreement, the MSA, or any Tesla document. The structural relationship runs HiON → Host. Tesla appears as the equipment manufacturer and network operator behind HiON.

3.3 — The 9–14 month timeline and the utility long pole

Typical host site timeline: 9–14 months from signed agreement to live operating site (hion-context.md §2). The phases (operator depth in franchisee curriculum M06–M08; exec lifecycle in M07):

• Months 0–2. Final site survey, design, utility service-order opening.
• Months 2–9. Permitting (variable by AHJ), utility interconnection (the long pole — transformer backlogs of 9–18 months are common in many markets), design finalization.
• Months 9–13. Construction (cabinet pads, trenching, equipment delivery and setting, electrical final).
• Months 13–14. Commissioning by HiON Engineering; ribbon-cutting within the 5-day window post-commissioning.

The single most consequential variable in any host pitch: utility interconnection. The 9–14 month range narrows toward 9 in markets with short transformer backlogs and routine interconnection class; it stretches toward 14 (or longer) in markets where the utility runs 9–18-month transformer queues. The executive does not commit to a specific timeline without Joe Lewis or HiON Engineering on the conversation.

3.4 — The ideal site profile

Five attributes; their intersection is the qualifying condition (hion-context.md §3):

• Visibility. Highway-arterial, interstate-exit, or major arterial location. Drive-by visibility from a highway is a strong signal.
• Space. 4–12 parking stalls available for charging use. Fewer than 4 stalls produces a sub-scale site; more than 12 is structurally fine but harder to land in a single transaction.
• Co-tenants. Restaurants, hotels, shopping, coffee within walking distance — drivers want to do something while their vehicle charges. A site with no walkable co-tenants is a worse site even if visibility and power are excellent.
• Power. 3-phase commercial power access — without it, utility interconnection cost and timeline scale up materially.
• Zoning. Commercial zoning that permits charging operations 24/7/365 without variance. Variance work is doable but adds 3–6 months to the timeline.

The executive uses the five-attribute test as the disqualifying screen, not the marketing pitch. If a prospect’s site fails on two or more attributes, the conversation pivots either to a different site they own or to declining politely. Pushing a sub-scale site through the funnel wastes everyone’s time.

3.5 — The ancillary revenue policy (compliance-binding phrasing)

Any business on the host’s site that is not the HiON charging facility — QSR, coffee, convenience, car wash, retail, hospitality — is independent of the HiON franchise. HiON does not collect royalties on ancillary revenue. This is the Akerman-redlined phrasing zone.

The verbatim compliance-safe statement:

“Any ancillary business operated on your site is independent of the HiON franchise; HiON does not collect royalties on ancillary revenue.”

What you do NOT say:

• “100% of profit from all ancillary businesses.” — was a V2 marketing line, redlined explicitly out of compliance copy. Implies HiON guarantees something it doesn’t.
• “You keep all the upside.” — undefined “upside,” implies a HiON-guaranteed framework.
• “All the foot traffic, all the sales.” — overstates HiON’s contribution to ancillary revenue and crosses into a financial-performance representation.

The compliance translation table for ancillary revenue lives in M09; the same phrasing is the controlling version in any pitch, deck, sales call, or web copy.

3.6 — The cap-rate effect (host page only)

The most-effective single financial illustration in the Host product’s vocabulary. From hion-context.md §3 and the host page of site-v3/COPY.md:

“A $120K/yr rent stream at a 6.5% cap rate implies ~$1.85M of asset value. Adding a 4-port Supercharger has been illustrated as a path to ~$4.2M.”

Three rules around this example:

• It lives on the Host page only. Akerman removed it from the Franchise page during the V2 → V3 compliance redline. Do not move it back.
• It is an illustration, not a guarantee. Phrasings like “your property goes from $1.85M to $4.2M” overstate. The compliance-safe phrasing uses “has been illustrated as a path to” or “modeled at.”
• It is the closing argument with a property-owner prospect who has cap-rate intuition. For a property owner whose mental model is cap-rate-driven, this is the framing that pierces. Use it deliberately.

The cap-rate framing is also why the Host product is sometimes described as a “property enhancement” rather than a “yield product.” That framing was removed from the Franchise page (where it overstated for an operator audience) and survives on the Host page (where it lands).

3.7 — What the host explicitly does NOT get

A short list. The franchisee is contractually prohibited from offering any of these on HiON’s behalf, and the host should not expect them:

• Uptime guarantees. The public-safe descriptor is “designed to support high uptime.” Internal targets are 98%+; that number is not in the host agreement.
• Revenue guarantees. HiON does not guarantee a kWh-per-day, a session count, or a driver volume at the host site.
• Exclusivity. HiON can develop additional sites in the area, including within the same retail node.
• Discounted or free charging for the host’s guests. Pricing is a network function. The franchisee cannot offer “free charging for hotel guests after 10pm” or any similar arrangement.
• Pricing influence. The host does not set or influence per-session pricing.

When a host prospect floats any of these, the executive’s job is to politely and clearly decline before the negotiation deepens, not after.

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Section 4 · The numbers

All public-safe.

Metric	Value	Source
Host capital contribution	$0	hion-context.md §2
Typical signed-to-live timeline	9–14 months	hion-context.md §2
Utility transformer backlog (typical)	9–18 months	hion-context.md §2 [CONFIRM regional variance]
Ideal site stalls	4–12	hion-context.md §3
Ideal site power	3-phase commercial	hion-context.md §3
Ribbon-cutting window post-commissioning	5 calendar days	franchisee curriculum M08 [CONFIRM Ops Manual]
Cap-rate effect example — base	$120K/yr rent @ 6.5% cap = ~$1.85M asset value	hion-context.md §3
Cap-rate effect example — with 4-port Supercharger	illustrated path to ~$4.2M	hion-context.md §3 (host page only)

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Section 5 · Why this matters

The Host product reaches a different counterparty than the Franchise product. Most property-owner prospects don’t speak FDD; they speak NOI, cap rate, debt-service-coverage, and tenant credit. The Host product’s pitch has to land in the property owner’s vocabulary — and HiON’s compliance rails are the same as for the Franchise product. The combination of vocabulary mismatch + identical compliance rails is where mistakes happen.

The Acknowledged Elephant: an executive briefing a property owner may feel safe being looser with framings (“you’ll see the foot traffic, you’ll keep all the ancillary upside, your property value jumps”) because the audience is not a franchise operator. The audience is different; the rails are the same. Akerman redlined “100% of profit from ancillary businesses” specifically because that framing showed up in informal property-owner pitches before V3.

Two specific risks:

• Cap-rate example drift. The $1.85M → $4.2M example survives on the Host page only. Putting it in a slide deck for a Franchise prospect — or in a press response about Franchise economics — is a redline violation.
• Ancillary phrasing drift. “You keep 100%” feels intuitive in conversation and is the redline trip-wire that Kevin Hein specifically wrote against.

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Section 6 · Decision scenarios

Scenario 1 — The retail-center owner asking “what’s in it for me?”

The owner of a 200,000 sq ft regional shopping center asks Joe Lewis: “OK, you put chargers on my property at your cost. What’s in it for me?”

What does the executive say?

The right answer leads with the structural facts the property owner cares about, in the order they care about them:

“Three things. First, the site agreement pays you — typically a long-term arrangement structured around the site economics, which we walk per-deal because every property is different. Second, the charging facility brings driver traffic to your center during charge sessions of 20–45 minutes; we can model the foot-traffic implications based on Tesla’s network-wide utilization data and the visibility profile of your specific site. Third — and this is the framing many property owners find most useful — there’s a cap-rate effect on the asset itself. A $120K/yr rent at a 6.5% cap implies $1.85M of asset value. Adding a 4-port Supercharger has been illustrated as a path to ~$4.2M. We can run that math against your actual cap-rate assumptions. Important: any ancillary business operated on your site is independent of the HiON franchise; HiON does not collect royalties on your ancillary revenue.”

Cited basis: hion-context.md §§2, 3; redline-safe ancillary phrasing verbatim.

Scenario 2 — The hotel owner who wants “free charging after 10pm for guests”

A hotel owner says: “Great. One condition — I want free charging for my hotel guests after 10pm. Otherwise we won’t sign.”

What does the executive say?

This is a hard structural decline, not a negotiation. The franchisee is contractually prohibited from offering this; HiON cannot direct it either.

“That arrangement isn’t available under our model — pricing is a network function, and the franchisee is contractually prohibited from offering discounted or free charging for any host’s guests, on HiON’s behalf or on their own. It’s not a negotiation point; it’s a structural condition. What we can offer instead: visibility for your hotel in any HiON local marketing for the site, signage and wayfinding from the highway that benefits both the chargers and the hotel, and a long-term site agreement that pays you regardless of how your guests use the chargers. If ‘free for guests’ is non-negotiable for you, we should disqualify the site early and save both of us the negotiation cycle.”

Cited basis: hion-context.md §2; franchisee curriculum M05 (Site Host prohibited commitments); franchisee curriculum M11 (pricing discipline).

Scenario 3 — The press question about ancillary revenue

A trade journalist asks Will: “HiON’s pitch to property owners is that they keep 100% of the ancillary revenue, right?”

What does the executive say?

The wrong answer is “yes” or “essentially yes.” Both phrase-match the redlined V2 framing.

The right answer uses the verbatim compliance phrasing:

“The framing we use is: any ancillary business operated on the host’s site is independent of the HiON franchise; HiON does not collect royalties on ancillary revenue. We don’t make a ‘keep 100%’ claim because it implies a quantification HiON isn’t structured to support. The ancillary business is the host’s business — we’re not party to it.”

Cited basis: hion-context.md §7 (Akerman redline on ancillary phrasing); M09 redline table.

Scenario 4 — The Franchise prospect asking about cap-rate effect

A franchise prospect at the Franchise discovery stage asks Joe Lewis: “Does the property value bump from your $1.85M to $4.2M example apply to my sites too?”

What does the executive say?

The cap-rate example was removed from the Franchise page during the V3 redline because Franchise prospects do not own the underlying real estate (they lease from a Site Host) — so the cap-rate effect doesn’t accrue to them in the way it accrues to a property owner.

“The cap-rate framing applies to the Host product — the property owner’s asset. As a Franchise operator, you’re leasing the site from a Site Host, not owning it, so the cap-rate effect on the host’s asset doesn’t accrue to you. What does accrue to you on the Franchise side is the site-level operating economics, which we cover in your franchisee training and in any specific deal modeling we do with you. If you’re also planning to own the underlying real estate at some of your sites, that’s a different conversation — we can structure that, and the cap-rate effect would apply to those specific sites.”

Cited basis: hion-context.md §7 (cap-rate example host-page-only redline); M04 (Franchise product); M05 §3.6.

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Section 7 · Common executive blind spots

1. “Keep 100% of ancillary.” Consequence: direct redline violation. Akerman called this out specifically. Prevention: the verbatim phrasing — “Any ancillary business operated on your site is independent of the HiON franchise; HiON does not collect royalties on ancillary revenue.”

2. Citing the cap-rate example in Franchise-product contexts. Consequence: it was removed from the Franchise page for compliance reasons; reintroducing it overstates and applies a host-owner framing to a leasee. Prevention: the example is Host-page-only. Mental tag.

3. Committing to a specific timeline without Joe Lewis or HiON Engineering on the call. Consequence: utility interconnection variance can stretch 9 months to 14+ months; a verbal commitment on “we’ll be live in 10 months” lands hard when transformer queues push it to 16. Prevention: state the range (9–14 months) with utility as the long pole; defer specific timeline to engineering.

4. Treating the Host product as “lease-plus.” Consequence: underdelivers the property-enhancement framing; misses the cap-rate effect; converts at lower rate. Prevention: lead with zero capital + long-term agreement + 24/7 ops + the cap-rate framing where the audience is property-owner-fluent.

5. Conceding to host requests that are structurally prohibited. Consequence: the franchisee operating the site cannot honor the commitment; the deal falls apart at lease execution or — worse — after construction begins. Prevention: know the prohibited-commitment list (§3.7) by heart. Decline early.

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Section 8 · Self-check

Pass threshold: 80%. At least three items drill the redline (per template Section 8 rule for compliance-touching modules).

1. What is the host’s capital contribution under the Host product? (§3.1)
2. List four things HiON brings to a host-program site. (§3.1)
3. What is the typical signed-to-live timeline, and what is the long pole? (§3.3)
4. State the five attributes of the ideal site profile. (§3.4)
5. Provide the verbatim Akerman-compliant phrasing for the ancillary revenue policy. (§3.5)
6. Identify the redlined phrasing error: “With HiON on your property, you keep 100% of the profit from any restaurant, hotel, or retail you operate alongside the chargers.” (§3.5; redline table M09)
7. State the cap-rate effect example with the host-page-only caveat. (§3.6)
8. Name three things the host explicitly does NOT get. (§3.7)
9. Identify the redlined phrasing error and correct it: “HiON will get your hotel guests free charging, target 98%+ uptime, and grow your property value from $1.85M to $4.2M with a 4-port Supercharger added — and you keep 100% of all the new restaurant and retail revenue that comes with the traffic.”
10. Scenario. A property owner you’ve been pitching for 6 weeks emails Joe Lewis saying: “We’re ready to go. Send us the Host agreement and we’ll have our counsel review it. One thing — our COO needs to know what uptime you’ll commit to, because we have a hotel anchor tenant who’s anxious about reliability for guest experience.” Walk the response — what’s the structural answer on uptime, who reviews the COO’s framing, and what’s the safe phrasing?

Answer key

1. $0. (§3.1)
2. Any four of: design, utility engagement, full build financing, V4 equipment, 24/7 operations, billing. (§3.1)
3. 9–14 months; long pole is utility interconnection (transformer backlogs of 9–18 months in many markets). (§3.3)
4. Visibility (highway/arterial), 4–12 stalls, walkable co-tenants, 3-phase commercial power, commercial zoning. (§3.4)
5. “Any ancillary business operated on your site is independent of the HiON franchise; HiON does not collect royalties on ancillary revenue.” (§3.5)
6. “Keep 100% of the profit” is the redlined phrasing — was V2 marketing language, removed in the Akerman redline. Use the verbatim phrasing from Q5. (§3.5; M09)
7. “A $120K/yr rent at a 6.5% cap implies ~$1.85M of asset value. Adding a 4-port Supercharger has been illustrated as a path to ~$4.2M.” — host-page only; do not use in Franchise-product contexts. (§3.6)
8. Any three of: uptime guarantees, revenue guarantees, exclusivity, discounted or free charging for guests, pricing influence. (§3.7)
9. Four redline issues plus one unverified comparative. Correct version: “The Host product is structured around a long-term site agreement; HiON brings full build financing, V4 equipment, and 24/7 operations. We don’t commit to uptime guarantees, revenue guarantees, or discounted charging for any tenant. The cap-rate framing — $120K/yr rent at a 6.5% cap implying ~$1.85M of asset value, with a 4-port Supercharger illustrated as a path to ~$4.2M — is one way property owners model the asset effect. Any ancillary business operated on your site is independent of the HiON franchise; HiON does not collect royalties on ancillary revenue.” (§§3.5, 3.6, 3.7)
10. Structural answer on uptime: HiON does not commit to a contractual uptime guarantee in the host agreement. The public-safe descriptor is “designed to support high uptime; actual uptime varies by site and equipment.” Internal targets (98%+) are not in the agreement and are not for the host’s COO to see in writing. Reviewer: Joe Lewis on operations framing; Kevin Hein on any language going into the host agreement; nobody commits to uptime in writing without that pair on the email. Safe phrasing: “Two things to clarify before counsel review. First, on uptime: HiON’s host agreement is designed to support high uptime; actual uptime varies by site and equipment, and we don’t structure the agreement with a contractual uptime guarantee — that’s a structural feature of how the franchise system, the MSA with Tesla, and the operations apparatus are integrated. For your hotel anchor’s experience question, the most relevant context is Tesla’s network-wide uptime, which is publicly cited at 99.9% — that’s the network we’re operating on. Second, on agreements: I’ll send the Host Site Agreement template directly, with Kevin Hein at Akerman copied — your counsel can route specific questions to him in parallel with our negotiation. Let’s set a working session for next week to walk the agreement page-by-page.” (§3.7 prohibitions; hion-context.md §7 incentives-language pattern)

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Section 9 · Cross-references

Other exec curriculum modules

• M04 · The Franchise product — the structurally distinct sibling.
• M07 — site lifecycle including the utility long pole.
• M08 — what HiON operates at host-program sites; the Franchisee Training Program summary covers the operator who runs day-to-day.
• M09 — the full redline table (ancillary, cap-rate, uptime hedging, incentives).

External documents

• hion-context.md §§2, 3, 7
• site-v3/COPY.md — host page copy (canonical phrasings)
• Host Site Agreement template [CONFIRM]
• Lease Addendum + Collateral Assignment [CONFIRM]

Franchisee curriculum overlap

• [M05 · LEASE · SITE · HOST · RELATIONSHIP · LEASE · ADDENDUM](https://training.hionsuperchargers.com/curriculum/m05-lease-site-host-relationship-lease-addendum/) — lease and Site Host mechanics from the franchisee-operator side.

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Section 10 · Source verification log

Claim	Current source	Primary source needed	Status	Owner
Host capital contribution = $0	hion-context.md §2	Host Site Agreement template	unverified	Kevin Hein / Joe Lewis
9–14 month signed-to-live	hion-context.md §2	Historical site data	unverified	Joe Lewis
Cap-rate example ($120K rent / 6.5% cap / $1.85M → $4.2M with 4-port)	hion-context.md §3 + site-v3/COPY.md (host page)	Original underwriting source for the example	unverified	Bill
Ancillary revenue independence	hion-context.md §2, §7	Host Site Agreement template + Akerman redline doc	unverified	Kevin Hein
Host Site Agreement term ranges	(not documented in brief)	Template	unverified	Kevin Hein / Joe Lewis
Prohibited commitments list (uptime / revenue / exclusivity / free charging / pricing)	hion-context.md §7 + franchisee curriculum M05	Franchise Agreement + MSA cross-reference	unverified	Kevin Hein

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Section 11 · Change log

Version	Date	Author	Changes
v0.1	2026-05-20	Claude	Initial draft.