The number one thing to consider for electric car charger installation is the location of the charger. If you are considering a car charger installation in a business like a hotel or restaurant, then you may need to consider your patrons attitudes towards electric cars first and an electric vehicle charger locator service may be able to help.
If you see multiple electric cars in your parking lot at any given time, then it’s probably a good idea to start the electric car charger installation process, because it can take a while from start to finish. I’d also recommend that if you are the owner or manager of the hotel or restaurant, then you should ask any electric car driving patrons about their electric cars – they are likely to be very enthusiastic and may provide you with some insights (ever think about what to do if the charger breaks and one of your customers was expecting to use it? or how to insure the charger?), especially if you haven’t taken the electric car leap yourself.
The Electric Leap
So, you’ve decided that you are definitely going to install an electric car charger in your parking lot or garage, but where? A lot of people think electric car owner get special treatment because the electric car charging spots are often close to the building, like handicap spots, but the reality is that it costs a lot of money to install an electric car charger far away from a building because more wire needs to be used. If there is already some wiring for lights in the parking lot, then there is the potential to install an electric car charger near those lights as well.
If you are looking to install an electric car charger that also has an advertising component to it, like a Volta charger, then Volta will likely help (or maybe even direct) you with where to install the electric car charger. Volta’s business model is significantly different from most other electric car charger companies, because their revenue is based on the ads that are displayed on their electric car chargers.
So, the electricity is provided to the electric car drivers for free, which is probably the main reason why Volta’s electric car chargers are the most used electric car chargers in the United States. Honestly, Volta’s electric car chargers look very nice and have high quality screens for displaying ads. I have tried to design my own similar charger, and even just decent outdoor rated screens themselves were about $4,000 each (there are 2 screens per Volta charger), so it quickly became cost prohibitive to build a similar charger. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say that a Volta charger would cost about $15,000 for the unit itself, including installation. I’ve never worked with Volta directly, so this is just a guess.
So, electric car charger installation can certainly add a lot of value to your property, and given the price of gas recently, I think a lot more businesses are going to consider serving their customers by installing electric car chargers.
Electric Car Chargers for Rental Properties
Rental properties are a brick and mortar business just as much as any retail shopping center, hotel or hospital. A rental property will not have nearly as many guests in a dingle day as a retail shopping center, but level 2 EC chargers are very limited in the number of cars they can charge per day. While you may only make 1/5 of the income from a rental property EC charger as a shopping center electric car charger, you’d make more than having no EC charging station at all. Since electric car chargers are going to be needed in all brick and mortar businesses, they will also be needed in rental properties.
