Shell Recharge’s annual EV Driver Survey has shown that 54% of EV owners would choose a retail location if it had good EV charging facilities over one without. This is one of the key trends that are emerging as more and more people switch to electric vehicles.
Destination Chargers
The Shell Recharge data shows that retailers installing destination chargers such as the ZPN Park Hubz can have a competitive advantage over those that don’t. Given the surge in numbers of EVs on UK roads, this could be a key competitive advantage for the retail business that chooses to attract such drivers.
Debit Card Payments
All ZPN chargers can be configured to accept debit card payments. The Shell Recharge survey showed that this could well be an advantage for businesses looking to install public chargers. It found that 55% of UK drivers have four or more charge cars to charge their vehicles with, and had to manage those memberships through the year as well. Among UK drivers, the survey showed that 38% would prefer to have a single charge card. The simplest one of all of these is the bank debit card, so people can charge in the same way as they would at a petrol station forecourt.
At the same time, there is a large number of mobile phone apps out there that EV users use to manage their driving. As well as one to pay for one’s public charging, the EV user may use a separate route planning app to get between chargers on a longer route for example. Across the three European nations surveyed, Shell Recharge showed that 25% of EV drivers use five or more apps for their driving and car management.
More Simplicity Please!
Having EV destination charger at the retail outlet could be very good for business
One thing was very clear among those surveyed - once they had taken on their first EV, they had no intention of going back to fossil fuel cars. This is despite the bureaucracy and pain points they have in using and managing the vehicles. Essentially the pleasure to be had in EV use far outweighed the pain of the issues that they run into as part of running such a vehicle.
For businesses supplying EV infrastructure that should be an incentive to improve the way, one operates for the end user. Certain public charger operators - Shell Recharge included - cause a lot of grumbling in the EV community over issues like their opaque pricing structure and reliability. As competition heats up among charging providers, so the ones that provide the best experience will benefit financially as more drivers choose them over less reliable or more opaquely priced ones.
Installing an EV Destination Charger
Having a reliable and competitively priced EV destination charger at the retail outlet could be very good for business.
If one installs a rapid charger such as the ZPN Street Hubz or Park Hubzcharger then they may even get a full charge while in the retail outlet - that would attract many EV drivers over a slower charger!
