I work for a major U.S. auto parts chain at one of the stores not at corporate. Approximately 6000 locations.
I was recently thinking about the future. ICE cars aren’t disappearing anytime soon but EVs aren’t going anywhere either and every year there are more and more % on the road.
I think it would be smart for corporate to start planning for that future and get charging stations at every store. They’d serve three purposes:
-customer vehicles. EV customers tend to have more money and while there are obviously less parts for an EV those people still buy car stuff. A big one being detailing/wash and wax type products. Lots of margin on some of those products especially the nicer stuff. For this group of people I think during business hours the charging could be free and then after hours charge some money. Or offer one hour free and after that charge for charging. Seems fair to me. And when there is so little differentiation between auto parts stores (for the most part it’s the same stuff with similar prices) the ability for a customer to charge their EV for 15 mins while they browse the store might just make a big difference.
-employee vehicles. It’s hard to hire/retain employees at these low paying jobs. Chronically understaffed at all 4 stores I’ve worked at over a 6+ year period. If even one employee per store has an EV/PHEV that one employee might be happier or less likely to leave for a job elsewhere. That has a value in my mind and likely costs the company less than just paying everyone more. Especially at a parts store where many employees are VERY anti EV so you won’t have a large percentage of people using up the chargers every day. Employee charging should be free IMO. Or maybe offer 4 hours free charging after that it costs money?
-delivery vehicles. Our fleet mostly consists of Nissan frontiers, Nissan Versas, Nissan kicks, and ford rangers although apparently some lucky stores get CanyoRados or Mavericks. But most parts deliveries are small items delivered very short distances around town. Which is PERFECT for an EV and literally the least efficient use case for an ICE car. IMO the store fleets should mostly consist of Bolts or Leafs with one or two cheap pickups (Frontier, Maverick, CanyoRado, whatever) for the occasional larger/further delivery. Would save a TON of money on gas and maintenance. More than enough to cover the cost of the chargers I think.
What do y’all think? Should companies like the one I work for do this stuff? Would it make you more likely to shop or work there? Or is it still just too expensive for too little benefit? Would love to hear your opinions. With companies like ChargePoint that offer a cloud management for billing, access control, etc. it would not require much effort for corporate to handle. I would think depending on store size and amount of delivery vehicles maybe 2-3 dual plug L2 ChargePoints would be sufficient. For stores with a lot of deliveries perhaps a single DCFC added on would be smart.
I was recently thinking about the future. ICE cars aren’t disappearing anytime soon but EVs aren’t going anywhere either and every year there are more and more % on the road.
I think it would be smart for corporate to start planning for that future and get charging stations at every store. They’d serve three purposes:
-customer vehicles. EV customers tend to have more money and while there are obviously less parts for an EV those people still buy car stuff. A big one being detailing/wash and wax type products. Lots of margin on some of those products especially the nicer stuff. For this group of people I think during business hours the charging could be free and then after hours charge some money. Or offer one hour free and after that charge for charging. Seems fair to me. And when there is so little differentiation between auto parts stores (for the most part it’s the same stuff with similar prices) the ability for a customer to charge their EV for 15 mins while they browse the store might just make a big difference.
-employee vehicles. It’s hard to hire/retain employees at these low paying jobs. Chronically understaffed at all 4 stores I’ve worked at over a 6+ year period. If even one employee per store has an EV/PHEV that one employee might be happier or less likely to leave for a job elsewhere. That has a value in my mind and likely costs the company less than just paying everyone more. Especially at a parts store where many employees are VERY anti EV so you won’t have a large percentage of people using up the chargers every day. Employee charging should be free IMO. Or maybe offer 4 hours free charging after that it costs money?
-delivery vehicles. Our fleet mostly consists of Nissan frontiers, Nissan Versas, Nissan kicks, and ford rangers although apparently some lucky stores get CanyoRados or Mavericks. But most parts deliveries are small items delivered very short distances around town. Which is PERFECT for an EV and literally the least efficient use case for an ICE car. IMO the store fleets should mostly consist of Bolts or Leafs with one or two cheap pickups (Frontier, Maverick, CanyoRado, whatever) for the occasional larger/further delivery. Would save a TON of money on gas and maintenance. More than enough to cover the cost of the chargers I think.
What do y’all think? Should companies like the one I work for do this stuff? Would it make you more likely to shop or work there? Or is it still just too expensive for too little benefit? Would love to hear your opinions. With companies like ChargePoint that offer a cloud management for billing, access control, etc. it would not require much effort for corporate to handle. I would think depending on store size and amount of delivery vehicles maybe 2-3 dual plug L2 ChargePoints would be sufficient. For stores with a lot of deliveries perhaps a single DCFC added on would be smart.
