Installing E.V. Chargers is Finally Paying Off for Retailers

Sarajane Leary knows what to do when her electric car is low on power: She goes grocery shopping.On a recent afternoon, Ms.Leary plugged her Toyota bZ4X into a fast electric vehicle charger in the parking lot of a Hannaford supermarket in Altamont, N.Y., and then headed into the store for paper goods and potato chips.“I’ll get a 50 percent charge while I’m here,” she said.The time — and money — Ms.

Leary spends in a store while charging her car is exactly the kind of thing retailers, shopping centers and malls bet on when they started installing E.V.chargers decades ago.

For years, their experience was mixed, and the actual benefits were unclear.Now, new studies say retailers’ charging efforts may well be paying off: One peer-reviewed study by researchers at Boston University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison published this year looked at the impact of nearly 1,600 Tesla Supercharger stations in more than 800 U.S.counties and found a 4 percent increase in monthly visits for retailers within 200 meters of chargers after they were installed.

The effects were most pronounced for retailers within 150 meters.The researchers also found a 5 percent increase in spending.Another recent study, published in Nature Communications, analyzed data from California, where E.V.

ownership and charging infrastructure are more widespread than in other states.It found that installing chargers brought more modest increases in foot traffic and spending but that public E.V.

stations “tend to attract higher-income, exploratory visitors and local residents,” and in low-income areas they “enhance businesses.”Some companies — notably Walmart, the largest retailer in the United States — are seeing charging as a potentially profitable business in and of itself, not just as a spur for foot traffic and sales.They have begun building charging stations under their own brand names rather than relying on providers that lease a part of their parking lots to install ...