Sure, Mark Oil Co. is in the gas business. The company has distributed fuel to the Charlotte, N.C., area, where it’s based, since 1908. It has been branded either Amoco or BP since the 1960s, and today it supplies more than two dozen gas stations, including 17 of its own.
But Mark Oil Co. President Bill Tome would put it another way: “We are in the energy business, not necessarily the gasoline business.”
Case in point: Mark Oil recently installed what may be the largest citywide deployment of electric-vehicle (EV) chargers at a U.S. gas-station chain. The Level 3 DC fast-charging stations went into 11 of Mark Oil’s sites this past May.
Tome was inspired to investigate EV charging by his friend Quinn Ricker, president and CEO of Ricker Oil Co. Inc., Anderson, Ind. In 2015, Ricker Oil became one of the first convenience chains to partner with Nissan, manufacturer of the Leaf EV, on its No Charge to Charge program. The program, launched in 2014, offers customers who buy or lease a new Leaf with two years of free public charging at a network of participating locations.
With the support of Nissan, Ricker Oil installed nine Level 3 DC fast chargers at its Ricker’s locations in central Indiana. Ricker referred Tome to his contacts at Nissan, which just happened to be considering its next wave of participating cities in the No Charge to Charge program.
“Jay [Ricker] and Quinn are very good businessmen,” Tome says. “I know they check on things that are good for business.”
Mark Oil would become the latest of a dozen c-store retailers to participate in No Charge to Charge, joining not only Ricker Oil but also Terrible Herbst, Spinx Co., Sheetz and Mapco, among others. Nearly 70 c-store locations are now engaged in the program.
Nissan added Charlotte and nine other markets to its No Charge to Charge program this past summer. From Tome’s perspective, it was about time.
“The Charlotte area was starving for these types of units,” he says. “Most were in county buildings, a smattering at hotels, but not as far as locations like ours—places where someone driving through Charlotte would be able to stop, charge the car and move on.”
All of the Mark Oil stores with EV chargers are large-format, 3,600-square-foot boxes with detached gas canopies over eight MPDs, as well as detached car washes. Each of the charging stations sits at a stand-alone parking space at the far end of the parking area in front of the store. The EV chargers run off their own meters.
Leaf owners who are participating in the No Charge to Charge program can charge for free, and Nissan reimburses Mark Oil for the electricity costs. EV owners who are not part of the program pay to use the charging station, which offers connectors for both SAE- and ChaDeMo-compatible plugs.
“They buy electricity, just like they would buy gasoline, with a credit card,” says Tome. “We pay for the electricity supply to the unit, then offset with revenue we collect from people who use it.”
Charging sessions by non-Leaf owners have ranged from five to 13 per month. So far, Mark Oil is about breaking even on the cost, but Tome doesn’t expect much more in these early days.
“I’ve been pleased at the use,” says Tome, who admits that it was difficult initially to tell how much the charging stations would be accessed. And with gasoline prices being relatively low, the incentive for consumers to buy an EV is not as financially obvious. That said, Tome is ready to take the long-term view.
“Any change, you can either ignore it or embrace it,” says Tome. “You learn about it and provide service to your customers. One of the most important things we do is providing it as an option. That’s always the way I’ve looked at it.”
For Nissan, the No Charge to Charge program serves a couple of goals.
“First and foremost, we want to demystify how to charge your vehicle in public,” says Anthony Lambkin, national EV infrastructure manager for Nissan North America, Franklin, Tenn. “If we can break down the barriers to drivers being able to use and interact with public infrastructure, that’s a good thing.”
It also serves as a competitive advantage for Nissan dealers that sell the Leaf because most EV manufacturers, aside from Tesla, do not offer anything comparable.
“It has helped drive incremental sales, especially for those who may be concerned about the availability of public infrastructure,” says Lambkin, pointing out that it’s an effective selling tool for potential EV customers who are on the fence due to range anxiety.
“This isn’t a panacea. This is a great time to get your feet wet [in EV charging].”
Range anxiety—the fear that a driver could be left stranded with no place to charge the EV battery if it runs out of juice—is more of a perceived issue than a real one, Lambkin says. Drivers who have already integrated their EV and its range into their daily driving and commuting patterns have much less range anxiety. The growing public charging infrastructure and promotions such as No Charge to Charge help further shore up EV driver confidence.
“I can do 99% of my daily driving with 107 miles of range, but if I do get into a bit of an issue, I know I can always charge up in and around town,” says Lambkin, citing the 2016 Nissan Leaf ’s range.
The first 25 No Charge to Charge markets were chosen for their high number of Leaf drivers. The next 25 were a safe bet for the future, chosen for their EV sales potential.
“Those are places like Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit—places that have a good demographic fit, a good profile for EV ownership, but there’s a lack of infrastructure,” Lambkin says.
Combined, they put a public charging station within a 10-mile reach for 90% of Leaf owners.
In choosing markets for No Charge to Charge, Nissan weighs several factors, including household incomes, education levels and family status on a demographic basis, and the number of hybrid sales as an indicator of likely EV purchasers.
States with robust financial incentives for EV purchases, including Colorado, California and several Northeast states, also get priority.
In picking its retail partners for the program, Nissan has five core criteria:
- Access to a major thoroughfare. Potential sites should be easily accessible to EV drivers—those who live in the market and those traveling through it.
- Retail services. Drivers need to be occupied for the approximately 30 minutes of charging, so services such as an on-site restaurant, indoor and/or outdoor seating or groceries are all pluses. Even a site that does not have a large c-store can still have potential if it is anchored in an area with existing retail.
- Adequate parking. The charging station will take up a parking space, so a site should have a sufficient number of retail parking spaces to still support the store’s customers.
- Safe surroundings. Locations should be in areas where EV drivers will feel secure and the charging station will not be bothered.
- Geographic coverage. Sites that are located close enough to provide a charging safety net are preferable. “If I’m going to a part of town I don’t typically drive to, even though it might not be in a high-household-income area or area of high EV adoption, I can still charge my vehicle,” Lambkin says.
While gas stations and c-stores still account for a minority of the nearly 1,000 sites participating in No Charge to Charge, they do have a few key advantages over shopping malls, big-box retail and other locations.
“They have really great access to some of those major thoroughfares,” Lambkin says. “Some of them have excellent retail on-site. And large-format stores, plenty of retail parking, nonfuel parking—that’s a perfect fit.”
Another plus for gas stations: Consumers are already used to fueling there.
“It makes the behavioral leap to a different fuel type less of a leap when they know they can come to a station where they do all of their refueling, and it’s just another type of pump on the property,” Lambkin says.
For most of its partnerships with fuel retailers, Nissan has subsidized the cost of the charging station. “We understand in the early stages for this industry, the ROI for this type of infrastructure, equipment and installation is not necessarily apparent,” Lambkin says.
At the same time, Nissan has learned the importance of setting a minimum standard on pricing for EV drivers who are not part of the program. Previously, when Nissan would subsidize the cost of the charger, the retailer sometimes felt compelled to offer free charging to everyone.
“They could be putting other owners/operators of fast charging in the area out of business,” says Lambkin. “We are trying to create market equilibrium.”
In the case of Mark Oil, Nissan set a minimum price for non-Leaf drivers, or $5.95 plus 20 cents per minute. Drivers can pay by credit card or through an EV charging network membership such as EVGo.
For all the opportunity, there’s a roadblock to more EV charging deployment at c-stores: the mismatch of the charging event and the c-store shopping occasion.
It takes about 30 minutes to charge a Leaf to 80% capacity; the average in-store occasion clocks in under 3 minutes.
But this is only a temporary misalignment, Lambkin says. He cites research by the Department of Energy that promises charging speeds seven times faster than allowable with the current generation of charging technology.
“We’re getting much closer to a 10- to 12-minute charge for 200 miles at that kind of speed,” he says.
Even with these technological advancements, Nissan is under no illusion that gas stations will jump wholesale into the EV charging business. It does think, however, that this is a perfect time for fuel retailers to experiment.
“This isn’t a panacea at this point in time, where you have to rip out all of your gas pumps and start putting in fast charging,” says Lambkin. “This is a really great time to get your feet wet with the technology and understand how it works.”
He advises retailers who are testing charging stations to get to know the EV driver and their shopping behavior.
“That will get [them] much more prepared in the future when the vehicle mix starts shifting more toward alternative fuels and electric, and they can be better positioned to understand their own infrastructure equipment needs and where they need to scale up,” Lambkin says.
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