For years, the electric vehicle customer was easy to picture: affluent, often male, usually college educated, likely living in a single-family home with a garage and a second vehicle in the driveway. He was the early adopter, the technology enthusiast, the driver who could pay a premium for a new vehicle and install a home charger without thinking too hard about it.
That picture is changing. Not because new EV sales are suddenly taking over the U.S. fleet—not yet—but because the used EV market is beginning to do what used vehicles have always done for the gasoline-vehicle customer: Make a newer automobile technology affordable to more people.
“We have definitely noticed that at our charging locations the average [EV] driver is in a more economical vehicle rather than the higher-end vehicles we were seeing in the past,” said Harman Aulakh, vice president of marketing at Onvo, based in Scranton, Pennsylvania. “I would say that this is indicative of a wider range of families and individuals making the decision to purchase an electric vehicle.”
The numbers support what retailers are starting to see on their forecourts. Used EV sales more than doubled in the first quarter of 2026 compared with three years earlier, according to Marcy Bauer, senior vice president of network operations at EVgo. Bauer estimates there are roughly one million used EVs on U.S. roads today, out of about six million battery-electric vehicles overall. That figure, she added, could triple over the next three years as leases expire and those vehicles are resold.
The Lease Release
This supply story starts with leasing. A large wave of leases were written for electric vehicles between 2023 and 2025, according to Alex Agne, account executive at Electric Era. Many automaker finance arms could capture the federal tax credit through leases and pass the benefit to customers, helping move more than 1.1 million EVs into lease contracts during that period. With those leases expiring, those cars are coming back on the market.
“This year, they’re looking at about half of those hitting the used market, and then maybe even double that in 2027,” Agne said.
That volume is arriving as affordability stands as a primary pressure point for U.S. drivers. Used EV prices rose 5.1% from January to June 2026, with the biggest gains at the lower end of the market, according to a report by Recurrent, a Seattle-based electric vehicle battery analytics firm. Those price increases include a 9.4% hike among vehicles priced under $20,000. In other words, demand is strong enough that many used EVs are appreciating—something used vehicles are not supposed to do.
And that may be the most surprising part of this story: Used EVs were, not long ago, treated as a resale-risk category. The anxiety was simple: If the batteries degraded like those in a cellphone, as was originally anticipated, a used EV would be less a bargain than a liability. But real-world experience has proven much better than many expected.
“One of the biggest points of concern early on was battery health,” Agne said. “Are these things going to degrade? Am I not going to be able to get this range? And those fears have been very much overblown.” He said some EVs with 100,000 to 200,000 miles can still retain more than 90% of their range.
For the EV market, this is a gamechanger, according to John Eichberger, executive director of the Transportation Energy Institute (TEI). Early forecasts assumed EV batteries would decay quickly, but, he said, the tests those early cars were put through were flawed.
“When we tested the durability of the batteries, we put them through the ringer. And the decay algorithms made us think that within a couple years [they] are going to have lost a ton of capacity,” he said. “What we’re realizing is people don’t drive them the way we tested them.”
“They drive them much more gently,” he said, “and these batteries are in really good shape. These vehicles are not the five-year-old iPhone-type capacity we thought they’d be. They’re actually very viable vehicles.”
A New EV Driver
This unexpected shift in the used-EV market is changing who is likely to drive an electric vehicle, in many cases to the benefit of convenience retailers who are investing in EV charging. TEI’s 2025 consumer research described the typical BEV (battery electric vehicle) owner as a middle-aged white man earning more than $100,000 annually, with a college degree or higher and unlikely to commute daily. Ownership remained lower among rural consumers, older motorists and households earning less than $50,000.
But just a year later, as cheaper used EVs began to open the door to more varying drivers, Eichberger is seeing a difference. “They don’t always own their own home. They don’t necessarily have a place to charge at home,” he said. Those customers, he added, now have access to $25,000 and $30,000 used EVs that are in good shape.
Agne calls out other identifying features: rideshare and delivery drivers, apartment dwellers and shoppers whose primary interest in EVs is lower fuel costs. “As you get purchase-price parity, then you’re locking in fuel price savings,” he said.
That matters because charging behavior changes when the buyer changes. In 2022, roughly two-thirds of charging happened at home, according to Garrett Fitzgerald, senior director of transportation electrification at the Smart Electric Power Alliance. Speaking at an April 2025 Electric Vehicle Vision Group session, he added, “As the demographic of vehicle ownership changes and enters the mass market, it’s expected that some of that residential charging is going to shift to public. That’s in part because we’ll have more public infrastructure, but [also] we’ll have more owners who are living in multi-unit dwellings or residential locations that don’t have access to a dedicated charger.”
He cited 2023 research from McKinsey that foresees the amount of EV charging done at home will decline to 50% by 2030, while public charging will grow to 30%.
The C-Store Advantage
For convenience retailers, that shift may be the most important part of the used-EV story. The first wave of EV owners typically charged at home, from their garage or electrical panel, or at a charging unit installed in the home or garage. Agne said the next wave of EV owners, many of them renters lacking a garage or the funds to install a charger, will likely need public chargers along routes they already travel or at the locations they shop and take breaks.
Agne is already seeing retailers take advantage of the shift. Highway retailers are targeting road trips, he said, while neighborhood stores are often well positioned for the apartment dweller or the driver stacking charging into other errands.
Onvo’s experience underscores the point. “We’re seeing that our EV charging guests are primarily from beyond our core market, using our locations as a true connection point in their longer distance travels,” Aulakh said. “For us, this represents an opportunity because there is a higher likelihood that these individuals and their families will want to visit the store, stretch their legs, use the facilities and hopefully make a purchase inside the store.” (See “Catering to EV Drivers” in the August 2026 issue of NACS Magazine.)
Eichberger frames the opportunity in dwell time. Chargers within 100 meters of convenience stores averaged 188 sessions per port, per month through the end of last year, he said, with customers spending about a half hour at the charger. “Every port you have generates close to a hundred hours of customers parked on your property,” he said. A four-port installation could mean roughly 400 hours of customer presence each month.
That does not automatically create sales, but it creates an invitation. To make it more enticing, Eichberger said retailers need to note what consumers want from a charging location: safe, well-lit, 24-hour locations, with clean restrooms and food and snacks. “That’s the convenience store recipe,” he added.
Agne further recommends that the retail experience needs to be built into the charger. Loyalty programs, promotions and in-store offers can be integrated into the charging experience, helping a retailer make the charging stop feel like part of the brand. “If they can keep that same experience, that retailer forms a pretty sticky habit around pairing an EV charging trip with a visit to a convenience store,” he said.
Challenges Remain
Still, the used-EV opportunity does not erase the hard math of charging. The U.S. fleet changes slowly. Even as EV sales grow, the base of gasoline vehicles will remain dominant for years.
Retailers must solve for site-level economics. “I still don’t think you’re going to make money on selling electrons yet,” Eichberger said bluntly. The business case depends on utilization, customer conversion, local incentives, electricity costs, demand charges, installation costs and whether the charger brings incremental inside sales.
Timing and market penetration matter as much as strategy. Eichberger advises retailers watch their local market—not just national sales charts. Are area dealers selling EVs locally? Are EVs showing up in parking lots? Are competitors installing chargers? Is the store on a travel corridor? If the answer is no, spending heavily too early can strand capital and leave hardware outdated before utilization arrives.
Until then, the safer step may be preparing for the possible transition of the vehicle fleet. “When you’re building a new store, you might as well run the high-capacity conduit,” Eichberger said. “That’s something we’ve been advising for a long time. You might as well install the power panel now, because it’s so much cheaper now than retrofitting.”
Incentives and grants from utilities and public utility commissions also can help retailers build capacity before they install chargers.
Whatever approach a retailer takes, the used-EV market presents a practical, rather than ideological, question for convenience retailers. The customer is changing. The vehicles are holding up better than expected. The price point is moving closer to the mainstream. And the drivers who can least rely on home charging may be the drivers most likely to look for a safe, clean, familiar place to recharge.
That does not mean every site needs chargers today. It does mean that the next EV customer may be more likely to need the convenience channel to charge up, to take a break and to grab a snack.
