Why placement decides the budget

Two sites with identical chargers can differ by a factor of three in install cost. The difference is almost always geography: where the chargers sit relative to the electrical gear, and what lies between them.

Rules of thumb that save real money. Put the chargers on the same side of the building as the electrical room. Route through dirt, not concrete. Pull spare conduit while the trench is open. And if the run is long, send one feeder to a panel near the chargers instead of a separate wire for each.

Distance costs you twice

Every extra foot adds trench, conduit and wire. Past a certain point it also adds thicker wire, because long runs lose voltage along the way, and the chargers don't like arriving voltage that's low. So the wire gets upsized to keep the drop within about 3%, and wire cost climbs faster than distance. That's the staircase in the chart above.

What you dig through matters more than how far

Trenching through soil is the cheap option. Cutting asphalt means saw-cutting, hauling, backfilling and patching. Concrete is worse again, and boring under a road or a lot that has to stay open costs more still. A short run under a sidewalk can cost more than a long one across a lawn. Walk the route before anyone quotes it.

Copper or aluminum

Aluminum carries less current than copper of the same size, so it has to be bigger. It still usually costs a fraction as much, which is why it wins on large feeders and long runs. Small branch circuits stay copper. Aluminum needs terminals rated for it and installers who torque connections properly. Done right, it's routine. Done wrong, it's a callback.

One feeder, or a wire per charger

With the chargers close to the electrical room, running a separate circuit to each one is simple and cheap. As the distance grows, it gets cheaper to run one large feeder to a new panel next to the chargers and branch out from there. The estimator prices both and picks the cheaper one, or you can force either.

The rules that set the wire size

Chargers are continuous loads, so circuits and breakers are sized at 125% of the charger's input current.
Wire is sized from the code's ampacity table, then upsized as needed to hold voltage drop down.
Equipment rated over 60 amps, or over 150 volts to ground, needs a disconnect. On a 480 volt building, that's every DC fast charger.
The ground wire is sized from the breaker, and grows along with the phase wires when they are upsized for distance.
Level 2 chargers run on 208 or 240 volts. On a 480 volt building, that means a step-down transformer and a panel of their own.

Will the building take it?

A common way to check an existing service is to take the highest demand from the last twelve months, add 25%, add the new chargers, and compare the total with the service rating. The estimator does exactly that. If it doesn't fit, the options are a service upgrade from the utility, which is slow and expensive, or a load management system that caps what the chargers can draw, which the code allows.

The site work nobody budgets

Concrete pads for each charger, and one for any new panel or transformer.
Bollards, because cars hit chargers. Budget for them before one proves the point.
An accessible charging stall with the right slope, width and signage.
Striping, wheel stops, signs, lighting, and paving repair where the trench crossed the lot.

Limits

This is a screening estimate in 2026 dollars, built on typical prices and the national electrical code as commonly applied. It leaves out the chargers, the utility's side of the meter, unknown underground conditions, and local code amendments. A licensed electrician and an electrical engineer design the real thing. Use this to know whether a quote is sane, and to decide where the chargers should go before anyone draws them.