The Charge Sheet

EV charging is a real estate business

The industry argues about chargers. The money is made or lost on the address. A charging site is a small real estate development that happens to sell electricity, and it lives or dies on the same thing every development does: location, location, location.

Two 60 kW fast chargers, four real locations

Ten-year value, at 8%

Identical $131k build at every address, the site planner's default operating costs, 40 kWh per session and 5% annual growth. The four named sites use real utilization. The urban range assumes 45-minute sessions. The EV-friendly rate cuts the demand charge from $15 to $5 per kW, which is the kind of relief many utilities now offer charging sites.

Read the red bars carefully. They aren't a reason not to build. Every one of those sites uses the same equipment as the winner. They lose because they sit where demand isn't: a quiet street, a hidden garage, a property that most drivers never pass. Put the same chargers where drivers already are and the math changes completely. That's the point of this page, not a warning against the business.

Why location wins

Look at what actually varies between charging sites. Hardware prices differ by maybe two to one. Prices to drivers differ by about the same. Utilization, in the real data on this site, differs by forty to one. When one input moves forty times more than everything else combined, that input is the business.

Location sets the ceiling. Hardware, pricing and operations decide how close you get to it. Good equipment can't fix a bad address, and a great address forgives a surprising amount.

What good looks like

A well-chosen urban site typically keeps its chargers busy 5% to 10% of the time. That doesn't sound like much, but on the box above it's the zone where the business works. With standard electric rates, a good urban site sits around break-even, and the top of the range earns back the build. Add an EV-friendly electric rate, which many utilities now offer, or price a little above the minimum, and most of the range makes money. Good real estate gets you into the game. Good execution wins it.

The newer benchmark data backs this up. The best-placed chargers in it, at a high-end shopping center and at the only fast charger in a remote small town, each keep a charger busy about 6% to 7% of the day. That's the band, measured.

Traffic is not the same as customers. The travel plaza in the benchmarks sits on a highway, charges nothing, and still sees about one session per port per day. Location isn't just how many cars go past. It's whether the right drivers pass by, need a charge, can get in easily, and have a reason to stay.

Scarcity is real estate too

Prime real estate isn't the only way to win. The newer data has a remote small-town site in oil country, the only fast charger for miles, that is as busy per charger as a high-end shopping center in a major West Coast city. Drivers passing through have exactly one option, and they use it.

Scarcity works for the same reason prime locations do: demand with nowhere else to go. It comes with two conditions. There has to be real traffic passing through, since being the only charger in a place nobody drives to is just lonely. And you should price like the only option, fairly but not timidly, because that pricing power is part of what the location is worth.

Busy for different reasons, priced very differently

Real sessions per charger from the benchmark sites, run through the site planner with its default costs over ten years at 8%. Demand charges are billed on the peak each site's real cars actually draw, taken from the session data, rather than a share of installed power. A charger here means one unit, which in this data almost always charges one car at a time even with two connectors.

Underwrite it like a development

Every question a real estate developer asks about a retail parcel has a charging version. Ask all of them before anyone orders a charger.

  • Traffic and frontage. Volume on the adjacent road, which side of it you're on, and whether drivers can turn in without crossing three lanes. Awkward access has quietly killed more sites than bad chargers.
  • Who drives past, not just how many. Rideshare, delivery and other high-mileage drivers charge every day. The best site in the benchmarks is a convenience store near an airport, where those drivers wait between trips. A steady stream of them is worth more than a big traffic count.
  • Visibility. If drivers can't see the chargers from the road, or find them in the app photo, the chargers might as well not exist.
  • Anchors and dwell. What is there to do for thirty minutes? Food, coffee, shopping, somewhere to sit. The anchor tenant of a fast-charging site is a clean bathroom.
  • Access and circulation. Stalls you can pull through with a trailer, good lighting, and access around the clock. A gate that locks at 10pm is a business that closes at 10pm.
  • Power at the parcel. Available capacity, the distance to the electrical gear, and the utility's timeline. It's the charging version of having utilities at the lot line, and the install estimator shows what distance costs.
  • Competition. Who is nearby, how fast their chargers are, and what is being built. The garage in the benchmarks lost its drivers to faster chargers down the road.
  • Growth. EV adoption in the area, new housing and new roads. Underwrite the market you'll have in year five, but build for the one you have today.
  • Entitlements. Zoning, permits, parking minimums (turning required parking spaces into charging stalls can run into them), and any easements the utility will need.

Score an address

A rule of thumb built from the benchmark sites, not a forecast. For numbers, use the utilization forecast. Power doesn't change demand, only what it costs to build, so it's scored separately.

Measure it like a developer

Developers judge a project by its yield on cost: the annual operating profit once the site has settled in, divided by everything it cost to build. The interactive above shows it for each address. The test is whether the finished site would be worth more than it cost to build. If it would, you created value. If it wouldn't, you built an amenity, whatever the spreadsheet called it.

Site control is the asset

In real estate, if you don't control the land, you don't really own the business. Charging works the same way. The lease is as important as the chargers, and it usually gets a fraction of the attention.

  • Term. At least as long as the equipment's useful life, with renewal options. A five-year lease on a ten-year asset is a gift to the landlord.
  • Access. Around the clock, for drivers and for technicians, in writing.
  • Exclusivity. No competing chargers on the property, and ideally none within a set radius that the landlord controls.
  • Relocation and redevelopment. What happens if the landlord redevelops the parcel, and who pays to move everything.
  • Easements. The utility may need its own rights to bring in new service. Get the landlord's cooperation committed in the lease, not promised on a call.
  • Rent structure. Flat rent, revenue share, or a mix. Revenue share aligns everyone at an unproven site. Flat rent is cleaner at a strong one.
  • End of term. Who owns the improvements, who removes them, and what "restore the premises" means for a trench full of conduit.

The value beyond the plug

For a property owner, chargers are part of the real estate, not just a business sitting on it. They can fill hotel rooms, lengthen shopping visits, attract and keep tenants, and position a property for the next decade of drivers. Sometimes the charger earns less than the building earns because of it, and that is perfectly fine.

The only rule is to decide it on purpose. If the chargers are an amenity, fund them like one and measure what they do for the property. If they are a business, hold them to a business's standard. The expensive mistake is building an amenity and expecting it to perform like an investment.

Walk the site before you sign anything

  • Drive in from both directions at the busiest hour of the day.
  • Stand where the charger will go and ask what a driver does for the next thirty minutes.
  • Find the electrical room, then walk the route to the stalls, counting every sidewalk and curb on the way.
  • Check the cell signal at the stall, not in the parking lot. The connectivity check will grade it.
  • Count the competing chargers within a few miles, and note how fast they are.
  • Read the lease before you fall in love with the parcel.

The short version. Buy the address, not the charger.