Is now the right time to invest in electric vehicle (EV) chargers—or to change how you’re investing? It’s a question that many retailers are asking, but finding clear, helpful, non-biased information is a challenge.

“Electrification is a major movement in transportation energy, but it’s such a nascent industry still in its early stages so we all have a big learning curve,” said Jeff Hove, vice president of the Transportation Energy Institute (TEI). “It’s a big investment for retailers, and while there are a lot of federal dollars available to help offset those costs, nobody wants to put in a piece of equipment only to have it become stranded and non-usable. The purpose of the EV Council is to help retailers answer the questions they have, learn together and improve the whole process.”

The EV Council was formed by TEI and brings together industry leaders from every point of the EV charging journey. Its members include convenience retailers, grocery chains, real estate groups, auto manufacturers, major oil and energy companies, and electrification companies and consultants, among others. Its goal is to be a resource for companies that are investing in charging—whether they want to install and operate their own chargers or partner with a provider that will manage it on their site—and help them answer questions about when and how to execute installation to get the most return on investment.

“Retailers want to know: What are EV consumers looking for? What amenities do they want? How much will EV charging cost to install and operate? What is the right type of charger to buy? How many do I put in? How reliable are they? How long will it take? What will the return on investment be?” said Hove. “The EV Council does research, has expert discussions and tracks data that helps retailers answer all of those questions for their businesses. There is no other group like this out there where they can get that kind of insight.”

“The EV Council does research, has expert discussions and tracks data that helps retailers answer all of those questions for their businesses.”

Data-Driven Decisions

One of the EV Council’s critical tools that helps retailers determine how to effectively make an investment in EV charging equipment is the Charging Analytics Program (CAP).

CAP is a data tool that helps retailers paint a picture of what they can expect at the store level if they install infrastructure. It’s tailored to individual retailers and hinges on providing them with customized, unique metrics based on their market, county and benchmarking group. The data can be looked at in different ways depending on what a retailer wants to learn about their site, including what competition is in the area and how they stack up, how sites with similar locations and features to theirs fare, as well as the utilization rates, number of sessions, dwell times and session failures of nearby chargers.

CAP is a data tool that helps retailers paint a picture of what they can expect at the store level if they install infrastructure.

It was born from a widespread industry problem that retailers noticed—they needed to tackle EV charging installation, but the only analysis tools available to them were often expensive and opaque.

“Because typical analysis of charging viability was often conducted by an organization with a motive to sell their equipment, retailers didn’t know if they were being told the truth of how, when and where to install chargers. They had no insight into the methodology or algorithms, so it was basically a black box of data,” said Karl Doenges, executive director of the Charging Analytics Program. “They wanted a non-biased, nonpartisan group to offer resources in a more affordable way and provide insights from real data that helps retailers make decisions.”

CAP takes monthly snapshots of more than two million (and growing) charging sessions and presents the data as a 12-month trend line to show retailers how EV charging in their area has progressed over the past year, and therefore what they may expect going forward. “We don’t just guess about what we think is going to happen, we show retailers what has historically happened and what is currently happening by the month,” said Doenges.

He noted that with so many site-specific factors that can influence an EV charger’s success rate (like if a driver has to make a left-hand turn across traffic to get to the site or not, for example) it’s important to first compare your site against CAP’s county-level benchmarking metrics. “By zooming out to the county level, we wash out all those anomalies and get statistically relevant data. Someone can put their county in, and we can quickly give them all the counties in the United States similar to theirs based on EV registration, population density and other metrics to compare to before you start sub-segmenting by site-specific metrics.”

With a general picture of average performance, you can estimate what installing EV chargers might look like for you. “Or if you already have EVs at your site, are you performing within the top benchmarking decile? Near the bottom? Are you batting average? The benchmarking is another way we help retailers project and plan for the future or increase their success by finding areas for improvement,” said Doenges.

From there, the program tracks site-specific utilization rates, number of charging stations, throughput and the number of charging failures, and takes into account location data, retailer size and demographic information.

“Retailers have very different use cases with very different dynamics behind their charging. So CAP allows you to take that charging data, zoom into a certain area and then start slicing and dicing,” said Doenges. “A retailer might say, I only want to look at how charging stations near highway entrance ramps and exit ramps perform, because that’s what my sites are like. Or I only want to look at convenience stores because that’s what I compete against in my market. Or I only want to see how chargers above a certain kilowatt level perform,” said Doenges.

The EV Council also offers other tools for retailers including a match-making list, which is a compilation of organizations supporting a wide array of ways to address the installation of electric vehicle service equipment at convenience stores. There is also a tool that helps identify local utilities and provide electric vehicle infrastructure support programs per ZIP Code.

Importantly the data is transparent. Retailers can not only see where it comes from, but they can also use it themselves.

“There’s no other tool like this where you can do your own analysis and make your own data-driven decisions instead of just receiving information from a vendor. It’s transparent, it’s open, and you can procure the data yourself,” said Doenges.

“The experts on the EV Council can really peel back the layers to find answers and underlying reasons for things.”

Industry Insights

While hard numbers and data are what drive investment decisions, there’s another invaluable benefit to participating in the EV Council—the shared insights, networking with industry experts and engaging in problem-solving discussions that occur during its meetings.

“During our meetings, we follow Chatham House Rules so that everyone—the manufacturers, the charge point operators, the installers, the convenience stores and site hosts, everyone that’s part of that EV supply chain—can have an open dialogue, work together through problems and find solutions and really help each other out. It’s invaluable to our industry,” said Hove.

The council also helps interpret data findings from CAP or uncover reasons behind data that might seem counterintuitive or random.

“When we see things in the data that are surprising or we aren’t sure what the numbers are being driven by, the experts on the EV Council can really peel back the layers to find answers and underlying reasons for things,” said Doenges.

Hove encourages any retailer “even remotely thinking about EVs” to get involved with the council. “It is so valuable for someone in your company to spend time with experts and get to know the industry, even if it’s just to come back and say, ‘Here is what we would need to do to jump into this,’” he said. “It’s a great environment, but is also so necessary for the future of the industry.”