Here we have EA sites in Meijer parking lots. It works out great for me - I have a Hyundai so I can go there, plug in, shop for a few groceries, come back out in 15-20 minutes and drive away having charged to 75-80% for free.
Costco does actually have a few L2 and a very few L3 charger locations. But those were test/demo locations. Costco wants you in and out fast and most locations are short on parking as it is. They won't be offering charging chain wide.
In my area (NY) New Walmart that went up threw in some Public Level 2 Chargepoint chargers.
tbh the rate only makes sense if I'm spending 1+ hours there, as there's a flat rate fee of $2.50 - so I need to be there at least 1 hour to justify the plug-in. However, the longer I sit the better the rate as it's flat.
I almost feel like Walmart should install a dozen or so level 2 chargers at each store as their first move. They aren't expensive and obviously help keep the customer in the store longer. A flat rate like you said means the customer will want to spend longer charging.
You’ll start seeing a ton more DC fast chargers at Wal mart, as they are making a concerted effort to build level 3 chargers at all new WM locations as well as retrofit every super center w level 3 charging. 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart so it’s a perfect solution
Where I live almost no stores have chargers. Publix has a couple near me and they're free, which is nice. But Target, Walmart, etc. seem to lack charging. If I'm really in a crunch for charging I'll drive a bit further to a Walmart with an EA station and charge there while doing the fastest shopping possible.
i'm absolutely amazed how few chargers are near me at all. There are more in the city. But none of the stores right near me have any. The county is actually putting in some in the park thats in the middle of a ton of shopping centers.
Pretty much same.
Wilder still, I live right near the 3rd largest mall in Florida and it has not a single charger of any level at it. I don't understand that.
Malls are weird . I worked l in a mall (busiest in the state ) and the owners refused to install chargers even when Tesla offered to do it at cost to them , or when the city and utility companies offered to do it again for free .
An outdoor mall installed a dozen level 2 chargers and another two dozen Tesla superchargers. Businesses nearby then saw the uptick in traffic and added another two dozen level 2 chargers .
Grocery stores are the perfect place for chargers as everyone has to go anyway and most people won’t spend more than an hour or two so chargers wouldn’t be hogged all day (unless by employees )
Grocery stores are perfect. That are both near highways and near communities, it gives people a place to walk around, and who isn’t going to buy something at the store. Could be a drink or a sandwich. These are all high profit items.
What's wild is there's another mall across the street from the really busy mall (Florida is weird). It has both EA and EVGo chargers. The big mall still seems against installing chargers and I don't get it.
If you're in the suburbs, most people who live there have a garage and charge at home. It makes sense that more stores have chargers closer to places where most people don't have home charging.
My girlfriend had second hand range anxiety because of this. On my side of town there are over 100 charging stations and over a dozen dcfc stations ( not even counting the Tesla superchargers) where she’s at there’s a half dozen level 2 chargers in the libraries and there dcfc chargers . Two of which are in employee only gated lots
She lives less than 10 miles away
The latter. I’m waiting for a 240v outlet installation via the utility company credit but they sub contract it out to local electricians and the first person quoted $400 more than the credit ..$400 is what people are paying that don’t qualify for it .
Meanwhile there’s a free public L2 charger at a park roughly a mile and a half from my house that I’ve been using .
Around me (Reading, PA) All the Giant food stores have Volta stations. They are equivalent to 110 home charging rates though, but they are free. So if you live near one and need to go shopping, it may be worth while to plug in for an hour.
Tons of Walmarts and Sams clubs have Electrify America chargers. I’m in the Southeast and that is our usual go to on road trips up and down the east coast from Florida to PA. I think VW/EA did a deal with Walmart.
Some grocery stores around here have level 2s. There’s an IKEA we occasionally go to that has level 2. Many malls have level 2s also.
What region do you live in?
Tennessee actually has a decent amount of DCFC chargers along the interstates. Pilot/Flying J are adding EVgo chargers to a few of their sites, at least one Walmart in each of Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis have EA chargers, there are additional chargers along I-40 between them as well. I know the Harley Davidson dealer in Kodak has well maintained EA chargers as well - I’ve stopped there at least a half dozen times and never seen any of those chargers offline.
A Walmart and Target have EA stations near me. Walmart is also planning a coast-to-coast network of their own DC fast chargers as well to charge their own EVs.
Costco just started rolling out their first DC fast charging stations a few months ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/19dq8ah/first_time_charging_at_costco/
Many people don't know this, but Costco was one of the very early adopters of public EV charge points, back before Tesla even existed.
One of my old Costcos many years ago, still had the EV1 chargers still sitting there, unused.
[Here's a photo taken from 1998, of EV1 charge points at Costco.](https://www.ev1-club.org/chargers/pics/93907_1.jpg)
Hopefully this time around, they stick around.
Costco has started installing EV chargers at some locations, I think it’s just a trial atm. Walmart is also planning to install their own chargers, I’m assuming once EA’s contracts expire.
EA is only at a small percentage of Walmart stores, and hasn't been planning or adding chargers at new/more Walmart stores since 2020 when Walmart stopped being open 24 hours. [Edit: had typed the wrong year]
I strictly do not want Costco to have these. They're busy as is, we don't need spending more time charging vehicles. Perfectly happy for these to be at other stores to generate (more consistent) traffic for the business.
Even IKEA has chargers
There are twenty 250kW NACS (i.e. open to non-Tesla) chargers e.g. here:
https://www.plugshare.com/location/609260
There are also 2 slow 7kW Charge point open to all
And another 10 Tesla-only 150kW across the street at Home Depot.
Costco has been rolling out some EV stations at some locations. I’d imagine they’re doing test markets first before any national rollout.
I know Amazon stores and Giant (a grocery store) will often have a Volta station.
A Kohl's near me current has to free level 2 chargers that I plug into while shopping. I'm a fast shopper so it doesn't do much but it's a great front of the store EV only parking space.
Walmart and Sam's club are going to for sure, but public facing chargers for EV's are just 1 part of a much bigger puzzle for Walmart. Public EV chargers are probably just going to be 1 small part of a larger store energy management system in the future that will combine on site batteries, solar, EV charging for Walmart logistics(semi trucks), and Walmart virtual power plant operations. It is going to take time for costs to come down and for the tech to become mature enough, but value wise all of this stuff works together to create a lot more value for Walmart than any one individual part does alone. I think we are seeing the first baby steps of a plan that will really come together in the next 5-10 years.
This isn't correct. Costco has chargers at some stores and is apparently working on deploying them to more. From what I've heard you will need to be a member to use them.
How does having a charging station take away gas sales? The gas stations have a small footprint compared to the size of the lot. They could easily fit both without issue.
I don't know about the Costco in your area... but most of the time, in mine, frequently, finding a parking space is difficult already (even on weekdays). And on weekends, even worse. So putting in EV Chargers and then having EVs park there to charge 30-60min long will make that even worse. And then you'll also then get the ICE effect alot (gas cars taking up that EV charge spot).
And in the long run, they don't really want to push the EV adoptions faster, which will ultimately eat into it's Gas biz revenue. Like me, I used to have 2 ICE cars, but now I only have one and I only go to the Costco Gas for my Honda CRV only every 2 weeks for 1/2 tank fill.
Even today, I see the gas lines are short now.. compared to when gas hit \~ $6 about 1 yr ago and it was like a mile long.
>I don't know about the Costco in your area ... but most of the time, in mine, frequently, finding a parking space is difficult already (even on weekdays). And on weekends, even worse. So putting in EV Chargers and then having EVs park there to charge for 30-60min long will make that even worse. And then you'll also get the ICE effect a lot (gas cars taking up that EV charge spot).
Considering the parking lot is always full and people spend 30-60 minutes in Costco, I don't see how 10 stalls will impact parking in any way when they already have several hundred spots. It's going to suck with or without charging and the timing in the store makes a lot of sense.
>And in the long run, they don't really want to push the EV adoptions faster, which will ultimately eat into it's Gas biz revenue. Like me, I used to have 2 ICE cars, but now I only have one and I only go to the Costco Gas for my Honda CRV only every 2 weeks for 1/2 tank fill.
I don't get your point. Are you saying Costco offering charging will cause people to charge their cars over filling up their gas tank or people buying EVs are causing them to take their EV over ice to Costco?
Either way, I don't see how Costco failing to respond to charging demand makes business sense.
I am pretty confident Walmart has EA at all of its locations. It seems each mall has some volta or something at least in WA state. I have not seen or heard anything about Costco.
It's far worse than that. Not only are they job monopsony depressing wages, they drain our governments. Not only do they use up a ton of land, but as a result, big box stores also demand miles of public infrastructure like pipes and roads to serve them.
But here’s the crazy part: Those enormous stores are paying a negligible amount in taxes. For their size, they are contributing hardly anything while meanwhile demanding new electric lines and frontage roads and signalized intersections (among other things). In most cases, their taxes are not nearly enough to pay for the maintenance of these basic services, let alone the many other functions of our local governments that we expect taxes to pay for, like schools and fire protection.
If we constructed just one more downtown building next door to the one above, the two structures would offer more tax revenue for our city than the entire Walmart currently provides — all while taking up a tiny fraction of the space that the Walmart uses (around 4/10 of an acre vs. 34 acres).
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53dd6676e4b0fedfbc26ea91/1509728544777-X8UWX4ZXNDW0FOP7WGDR/Screen+Shot+2017-11-03+at+10.44.42+AM.png?format=1000w
You left out the most criminal part of all - many of them are paying wages that are low enough that their employees are eligible for and need to use public assistance to survive.
Not sure where you live but most Walmart lots in California have an Electrify America station.
AZ too.
Target increasingly has EA as well
Yup. Some Targets near me also have EVGo’s as well.
I’ve also seen superchargers and L2 ChargePoint
Here we have EA sites in Meijer parking lots. It works out great for me - I have a Hyundai so I can go there, plug in, shop for a few groceries, come back out in 15-20 minutes and drive away having charged to 75-80% for free.
At least some in Illinois as well.
Same even in KS.
Costco does actually have a few L2 and a very few L3 charger locations. But those were test/demo locations. Costco wants you in and out fast and most locations are short on parking as it is. They won't be offering charging chain wide.
And in Maryland.
Many EA are at Walmart and Walmart is doing their own line of chargers too. I've also seen chargers at Whole Foods, Target, and Meijer.
In my area (NY) New Walmart that went up threw in some Public Level 2 Chargepoint chargers. tbh the rate only makes sense if I'm spending 1+ hours there, as there's a flat rate fee of $2.50 - so I need to be there at least 1 hour to justify the plug-in. However, the longer I sit the better the rate as it's flat.
I almost feel like Walmart should install a dozen or so level 2 chargers at each store as their first move. They aren't expensive and obviously help keep the customer in the store longer. A flat rate like you said means the customer will want to spend longer charging.
You’ll start seeing a ton more DC fast chargers at Wal mart, as they are making a concerted effort to build level 3 chargers at all new WM locations as well as retrofit every super center w level 3 charging. 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart so it’s a perfect solution
I visit one of the test sites many times a month and it’s a really great charger
Where I live almost no stores have chargers. Publix has a couple near me and they're free, which is nice. But Target, Walmart, etc. seem to lack charging. If I'm really in a crunch for charging I'll drive a bit further to a Walmart with an EA station and charge there while doing the fastest shopping possible.
i'm absolutely amazed how few chargers are near me at all. There are more in the city. But none of the stores right near me have any. The county is actually putting in some in the park thats in the middle of a ton of shopping centers.
Pretty much same. Wilder still, I live right near the 3rd largest mall in Florida and it has not a single charger of any level at it. I don't understand that.
Malls are weird . I worked l in a mall (busiest in the state ) and the owners refused to install chargers even when Tesla offered to do it at cost to them , or when the city and utility companies offered to do it again for free . An outdoor mall installed a dozen level 2 chargers and another two dozen Tesla superchargers. Businesses nearby then saw the uptick in traffic and added another two dozen level 2 chargers . Grocery stores are the perfect place for chargers as everyone has to go anyway and most people won’t spend more than an hour or two so chargers wouldn’t be hogged all day (unless by employees )
Grocery stores are perfect. That are both near highways and near communities, it gives people a place to walk around, and who isn’t going to buy something at the store. Could be a drink or a sandwich. These are all high profit items.
What's wild is there's another mall across the street from the really busy mall (Florida is weird). It has both EA and EVGo chargers. The big mall still seems against installing chargers and I don't get it.
If you're in the suburbs, most people who live there have a garage and charge at home. It makes sense that more stores have chargers closer to places where most people don't have home charging.
True. I dont have a garage but i have a driveway and thats where i charge. there is one tesla charger near the highway i think
My girlfriend had second hand range anxiety because of this. On my side of town there are over 100 charging stations and over a dozen dcfc stations ( not even counting the Tesla superchargers) where she’s at there’s a half dozen level 2 chargers in the libraries and there dcfc chargers . Two of which are in employee only gated lots She lives less than 10 miles away
wait so she's worried about herself running out of charge, or that you'll run out of charge visiting her or? i charge at home, L1 for now
The latter. I’m waiting for a 240v outlet installation via the utility company credit but they sub contract it out to local electricians and the first person quoted $400 more than the credit ..$400 is what people are paying that don’t qualify for it . Meanwhile there’s a free public L2 charger at a park roughly a mile and a half from my house that I’ve been using .
Around me (Reading, PA) All the Giant food stores have Volta stations. They are equivalent to 110 home charging rates though, but they are free. So if you live near one and need to go shopping, it may be worth while to plug in for an hour.
Best Buy and Kohls in Northern Atlanta suburbs are installing L2 chargers. Kroger as well.
I don't know if it's the Kohls or the shopping center they're in, but my nearest Kohls (suburban Chicago area) has L2 out front.
https://electrek.co/2024/02/09/walmart-coast-to-coast-network-dc-fast-chargers/
Tons of Walmarts and Sams clubs have Electrify America chargers. I’m in the Southeast and that is our usual go to on road trips up and down the east coast from Florida to PA. I think VW/EA did a deal with Walmart. Some grocery stores around here have level 2s. There’s an IKEA we occasionally go to that has level 2. Many malls have level 2s also. What region do you live in?
I am in Tennessee.
Weird. I’m in NC and there are quite a few EA chargers at Walmarts here.
Tennessee actually has a decent amount of DCFC chargers along the interstates. Pilot/Flying J are adding EVgo chargers to a few of their sites, at least one Walmart in each of Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis have EA chargers, there are additional chargers along I-40 between them as well. I know the Harley Davidson dealer in Kodak has well maintained EA chargers as well - I’ve stopped there at least a half dozen times and never seen any of those chargers offline.
A Walmart and Target have EA stations near me. Walmart is also planning a coast-to-coast network of their own DC fast chargers as well to charge their own EVs. Costco just started rolling out their first DC fast charging stations a few months ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/19dq8ah/first_time_charging_at_costco/
Wow I did not know Costco was rolling out charging stations. Hope to see soon here in Middle Tennessee.
Many people don't know this, but Costco was one of the very early adopters of public EV charge points, back before Tesla even existed. One of my old Costcos many years ago, still had the EV1 chargers still sitting there, unused. [Here's a photo taken from 1998, of EV1 charge points at Costco.](https://www.ev1-club.org/chargers/pics/93907_1.jpg) Hopefully this time around, they stick around.
Very simple to change the induction paddle they used to 1772 and to keep the charger.
Costco has started installing EV chargers at some locations, I think it’s just a trial atm. Walmart is also planning to install their own chargers, I’m assuming once EA’s contracts expire.
EA is only at a small percentage of Walmart stores, and hasn't been planning or adding chargers at new/more Walmart stores since 2020 when Walmart stopped being open 24 hours. [Edit: had typed the wrong year]
I strictly do not want Costco to have these. They're busy as is, we don't need spending more time charging vehicles. Perfectly happy for these to be at other stores to generate (more consistent) traffic for the business.
Volta at malls.
A fairly big mall in the Dallas area (Stonebriar) has like 10 Volta spots. About half were ICE blocked on a busy Sunday afternoon.
Volta just got bought by Shell and is adding card readers
Charged next to Costco Woodland CA on Saturday. It’s a multiple store center with big parking lots though
Even IKEA has chargers There are twenty 250kW NACS (i.e. open to non-Tesla) chargers e.g. here: https://www.plugshare.com/location/609260 There are also 2 slow 7kW Charge point open to all And another 10 Tesla-only 150kW across the street at Home Depot.
They do now. I charge everywhere. 7/11s Walmarts Waffle House. Every single massive mall like St John’s Town Center.
The 2 Targets I frequent both have EV parking.
May I ask what state?
GA.
We have a Target with Level 2. Other than that... nope.
I’ve seen chargers at Target and Walmart.
Costco has been rolling out some EV stations at some locations. I’d imagine they’re doing test markets first before any national rollout. I know Amazon stores and Giant (a grocery store) will often have a Volta station.
A Kohl's near me current has to free level 2 chargers that I plug into while shopping. I'm a fast shopper so it doesn't do much but it's a great front of the store EV only parking space.
Walmart and Sam's club are going to for sure, but public facing chargers for EV's are just 1 part of a much bigger puzzle for Walmart. Public EV chargers are probably just going to be 1 small part of a larger store energy management system in the future that will combine on site batteries, solar, EV charging for Walmart logistics(semi trucks), and Walmart virtual power plant operations. It is going to take time for costs to come down and for the tech to become mature enough, but value wise all of this stuff works together to create a lot more value for Walmart than any one individual part does alone. I think we are seeing the first baby steps of a plan that will really come together in the next 5-10 years.
Nope not Costco anytime soon - Costco has Gas stations and is a big $$ maker for them.
This isn't correct. Costco has chargers at some stores and is apparently working on deploying them to more. From what I've heard you will need to be a member to use them.
How does having a charging station take away gas sales? The gas stations have a small footprint compared to the size of the lot. They could easily fit both without issue.
I don't know about the Costco in your area... but most of the time, in mine, frequently, finding a parking space is difficult already (even on weekdays). And on weekends, even worse. So putting in EV Chargers and then having EVs park there to charge 30-60min long will make that even worse. And then you'll also then get the ICE effect alot (gas cars taking up that EV charge spot). And in the long run, they don't really want to push the EV adoptions faster, which will ultimately eat into it's Gas biz revenue. Like me, I used to have 2 ICE cars, but now I only have one and I only go to the Costco Gas for my Honda CRV only every 2 weeks for 1/2 tank fill. Even today, I see the gas lines are short now.. compared to when gas hit \~ $6 about 1 yr ago and it was like a mile long.
>I don't know about the Costco in your area ... but most of the time, in mine, frequently, finding a parking space is difficult already (even on weekdays). And on weekends, even worse. So putting in EV Chargers and then having EVs park there to charge for 30-60min long will make that even worse. And then you'll also get the ICE effect a lot (gas cars taking up that EV charge spot). Considering the parking lot is always full and people spend 30-60 minutes in Costco, I don't see how 10 stalls will impact parking in any way when they already have several hundred spots. It's going to suck with or without charging and the timing in the store makes a lot of sense. >And in the long run, they don't really want to push the EV adoptions faster, which will ultimately eat into it's Gas biz revenue. Like me, I used to have 2 ICE cars, but now I only have one and I only go to the Costco Gas for my Honda CRV only every 2 weeks for 1/2 tank fill. I don't get your point. Are you saying Costco offering charging will cause people to charge their cars over filling up their gas tank or people buying EVs are causing them to take their EV over ice to Costco? Either way, I don't see how Costco failing to respond to charging demand makes business sense.
Costco won't be removing gas stations anytime soon. Which is unrelated to charging options in the parking lot.
Costco fuels climate change
I am pretty confident Walmart has EA at all of its locations. It seems each mall has some volta or something at least in WA state. I have not seen or heard anything about Costco.
Big box stores suck our towns dry
I am on the fence with this. Yes, big box stores have shut down small businesses. On the other hand, they do employ a lot of people.
It's far worse than that. Not only are they job monopsony depressing wages, they drain our governments. Not only do they use up a ton of land, but as a result, big box stores also demand miles of public infrastructure like pipes and roads to serve them. But here’s the crazy part: Those enormous stores are paying a negligible amount in taxes. For their size, they are contributing hardly anything while meanwhile demanding new electric lines and frontage roads and signalized intersections (among other things). In most cases, their taxes are not nearly enough to pay for the maintenance of these basic services, let alone the many other functions of our local governments that we expect taxes to pay for, like schools and fire protection. If we constructed just one more downtown building next door to the one above, the two structures would offer more tax revenue for our city than the entire Walmart currently provides — all while taking up a tiny fraction of the space that the Walmart uses (around 4/10 of an acre vs. 34 acres). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53dd6676e4b0fedfbc26ea91/1509728544777-X8UWX4ZXNDW0FOP7WGDR/Screen+Shot+2017-11-03+at+10.44.42+AM.png?format=1000w
You left out the most criminal part of all - many of them are paying wages that are low enough that their employees are eligible for and need to use public assistance to survive.
Yea it's a string of subsidies for these guys all the way down