Electric vehicle (EV) charging site features that convenience stores already offer, such as highly visible chargers, multiple chargers, visible security cameras, prepared food, 24/7 access and a children’s playground onsite would reach or activate 94% of EV drivers, according to an Electric Vehicle Council (EVC) survey of site hosts and EV drivers titled Electric Vehicle Market Insights.
In addition to c-stores already having the built-in amenities, they’re often located right off the highway.
Historically, public charging development has taken off in suburbs and along highway corridors, with the advantage of available real estate, according to the EVC. As the EV market grows and EVs become less expensive, urban areas, which are currently “charging deserts,” will now need public charging infrastructure, the report said.
However, convenience-store chains with locations in urban areas, such as Nouria on the northeast coast, don’t have as much space for EV chargers.
“We have debates about how we lay out the EV charging stations,” said Tom Healey, vice president of facilities and development at Nouria. “We're trying to implement that more, but it's just an ongoing struggle in our business on how to lay out everything on the site when you've got limited property area.”
- Nouria is No. 29 on CSP’s 2025 Top 40 Update to the 2024 Top 202 ranking of U.S. c-store chains by store count. Watch for the full 2025 Top 202 ranking in the June issue of CSP magazine and in CSP Daily News.
Many sources believe that an adequate overall ratio of EV to public charger is less than 15 vehicles per charger, according to the EVC report. Nationally, however, when the EVC study was drafted in 2021-2022, there were 19.7 EVs to every one charger station. Many more public charging sites have been installed since 2021, but the number of EVs on the road has also increased. There is an immediate demand for more public charging in most regions, according to the EVC.
In 2024, 90.2% of vehicle sales in the U.S. were internal combustion engines (ICE) and hybrid electric vehicles, while 9.8% were battery electric vehicles and plug-in electric vehicles, according to the Energy Transportation Institute.
EV use is growing, though, with an expected 1.9 million EVs sold in 2024, an 11.5% increase from 2023, according to the EVC report.
While the growth of both battery (BEV) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) is undeniable, the transition to a fully electric fleet will be gradual due to the slow rate at which vehicles are replaced, said Karl Doenges, executive director of the Charging Analytics Program at the Transportation Energy Institute (TEI), a policy and analysis group associated with NACS. Doenges presented at the Feb. 5 Electric Vehicles Vision Group quarterly meeting.
Even if the U.S. were to adopt a policy of 100% EV sales by 2035, a significant portion (40%) of vehicles on the road would still have internal combustion, liquid-fueled engines by 2050, Doenges said. Additionally, consumers are keeping vehicles longer because of high prices and high interest rates. ICE vehicles still account for 92% of vehicles sold in 2024. Doenges also noted that the EV market is not growing uniformly across the country but is concentrated in about 16 states.
Another aspect to consider when weighing the benefits of installing EV chargers is that EV owners spend an average of $11 per store visit compared to the $6 spent by traditional gasoline customers, primarily due to the 25- to 40-minute charging times hopefully leading to higher in-store purchases, said Doenges.
From a convenience-retailer’s perspective, however, the extra $5 might not mean much.
“You've also got to think about that… You may have three or four internal combustion vehicle customers come in your store during the same period that you have one EV customer or even more,” said Healey. “When you're taking that $6 versus $11, you might be getting more market basket from that EV customer, but you have much fewer of them, so you've got to think about that as you're allocating how you use your property.”
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