As commercial enterprises seek to achieve their sustainability goals, maintain property values, and increase operational reliability, adding electric vehicle charging is becoming an essential success factor. With rapid advancements in EV charging technology and evolving market dynamics, embracing EV charging solutions will be key to unlocking long-term value and driving sustainable growth for commercial enterprises.  

This guide will provide you with an understanding of EV charging solutions tailored for commercial applications. It will cover an overview of commercial EV charging considerations, EV charging use cases and solutions, and how different configurations can benefit your business.

Whether you're a business leader, operations manager, or sustainability professional, this guide will serve as your roadmap to maximizing the full potential of EV charging solutions for your facilities and realizing economic, environmental, and operational benefits for your stakeholders.

Commercial EV Charging Considerations

Across the United States, businesses have seen firsthand the dramatic growth in electric vehicle adoption. Seven percent of all new car sales were electric in 2023, and EVs are expected to make up approximately 30% of all car sales by 2030. Many commercial industries are considering EV charging as EV penetration continues to increase, including corporate campuses, hospitals and healthcare facilities, retail stores, and commercial fleets.  

In fact, 15 million EVs are expected to become part of U.S. commercial fleets by 2040 as fleet operators in the shipping and logistics, maintenance, and transportation industries are exploring ways to reduce their carbon emissions and achieve sustainability goals, reduce long-term costs, and comply with regulatory requirements.

To facilitate their transition to electric transportation, businesses like yours are looking to implement convenient and affordable EV charging on their properties — but there are many things to consider as you embark on this new investment.  

Space, Uncertain Demand, and Other Challenges

There are real challenges to installing EV chargers at commercial sites, like limited space and uncertain demand. Understanding the viability of your site, including existing infrastructure, electrical supply limits, and physical parameters, is critical as you assess how EV charging could be deployed on your premises.  

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Based on your site characteristics, you may require different communication options to ensure reliable EV charging operations. For example, if you want to spread the chargers across a wide space, there may be a benefit to having chargers with LTE cellular signal to communicate with your intelligent energy management platform. The right expert can help you design and configure your EV charging site to optimize operations and ensure that chargers are working and communicating reliably.

Access to chargers — public, private, or both — is an important consideration when thinking about charging payment models and how to recoup your investment. Charger access will also inform expected dwell times and the types of chargers — like Level 2 (L2) or DC Fast Charging (DCFC) — that make sense for expected demand and utilization. As you think through what type of charging access you’d like to offer (e.g., perk for customers or workplace benefit for employees), you’ll start to get a better understanding of the solution that fits your charging needs.

Installation & Energy Costs

Deploying EV chargers is a serious financial investment, and it’s important to understand the best way to pay for them either upfront or over time. Both options are available, and understanding the pros and cons for each financing option will help guarantee the future financial success of the project. Discussing financing options with the right expert will ensure that you are financially prepared to start your EV charging journey and that you are deploying your site using the payment options that work best for your business.

But EV charger installation isn’t the only cost to consider. Since the charging stations need to connect to the electric grid, there are important considerations regarding EV charging rates, demand charges, and utility upgrades. Due to the complexities of electricity markets and design, we recommend speaking with experts who can help unpack the nuanced mechanics of electricity rate design and related market mechanics. Currently, a handful of electric utilities are developing EV-specific electricity rates, which would involve a separate meter for the EV charger. The rationale for developing EV-specific rates is based heavily on incentivizing commercial electric customers to charge during off-peak periods and on mitigating expensive demand charges. Demand charges are the highest peak hour of electricity consumption for commercial customers, and they can account for nearly half of your monthly electric bill.

Demand charges are a big issue with EV charging because EV chargers draw a lot of power during sessions and can lead to spikes in electricity consumption. This underscores the importance of intelligent energy management that spreads out electricity to individual charges based on things like driver preferences and the local power supply limits. As discussed later in the guide, intelligent energy management has many benefits that will help improve the project economics of your EV charging site, accelerate your financial returns, and ensure a seamless, convenient charging experience for drivers at your business.  

Financial Incentives for EV Charging

A combination of financial incentives and regulatory mandates is driving opportunities for EV charging. Financial incentives for EV charging include federal and state program funding, grants, and rebates. There are also significant tax credits available for qualifying projects to defray the capital cost of EV charging investments and accelerate financial returns. Consulting with the right expert can help you understand the financial incentives and tax credits available for your site and help improve the overall project economics. (For more information on state regulatory mandates and incentives, download our EV Charging Incentives and Regulations e-book.)

At the municipal, state, and federal levels, new laws are mandating electrification in the transportation sector and progressively prohibiting the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035. New legislation also mandates minimum requirements for EV charging stations in new construction, including parking lots, garages, and carports. The combination of regulatory mandates (referred to within the industry as “sticks”) and available funding and tax credits (“carrots”) are requiring and incentivizing a lot more EV charging.

Driver Experience

Lastly, you’ll need to consider how to create a seamless charging experience for drivers, including managing charging payments, assessing fees, and ensuring that chargers are working and available. There are many flavors to paying for charging sessions including offering charging as a perk for employees or customers, as well as collecting driver fee revenues for access to chargers. Payment options include an onboard credit card reader, a physical kiosk, and paying via mobile app. While drivers are used to credit card readers from many years filling up at gas stations, mobile apps offer premium benefits like setting charging preferences and showing real-time data like expected charge time, electricity price, and charging status.

EV Charging Use Cases and Benefits

Three primary use cases for EV charging are workplace, public, and fleet. While each use case has its own set of challenges, they also come with big benefits. Generally speaking, installing EV chargers on a property can reduce employee turnover, attract new customers, and help maintain property values. In addition, EV charging reduces carbon emissions and puts businesses on track to meet environmental and sustainability goals while future-proofing their operations as drivers switch to electric cars and demand more places to charge on the go.  

Workplace

If you’re a business owner looking to attract employees back to the workplace, offering EV charging as a convenient option for employees who want to charge while they work is a win-win. Adding EV chargers with intelligent energy management to your site can boost worker productivity, as employees don’t have to waste time moving their cars around in search of available chargers.

There are different workplace charging options, including dedicated employee parking and shared customer or visitor parking. Deciding how you want to configure your EV charging site will help inform the type and number of chargers you’ll need.  

As you implement workplace charging stations, you may face constraints like limited space, distributed parking options, and weak LTE cellular network signal. In addition, you might not know how many employees will need EV chargers, adding uncertainty when deciding how many chargers to install. Intelligent energy management built for sites with these types of constraints will facilitate employees being able to charge their EVs conveniently and reliably.

(Related: Workplace EV Charging Solutions)

Public

If you’re a business owner looking to attract more customers, offering public charging can lure new shoppers who also want to charge their EVs. Commercial areas serve a critical role in the buildout of public charging infrastructure, as EV drivers increasingly look for charging access away from home.  

Depending on anticipated usage of your public chargers, you may want to consider a combination of L2 stations and DCFCs. Customers in short-term parking with shorter dwell times may pay a premium for DCFC, while longer-term parking customers will be able to charge their EVs sufficiently using L2s.  

You may face challenges like limited space, uncertain demand for charging, and constraints with your local electricity supply and built infrastructure. Optimizing your site with an intelligent energy management platform helps mitigate these issues while ensuring convenient and reliable use of your public chargers.

Fleet

If you’re a fleet manager looking to achieve your company’s electrification and sustainability goals, transitioning to EVs can pay real dividends. Electrifying your fleet reduces your carbon emissions, helps you comply with regulatory requirements, and can lead to long-term cost savings.  

Deciding how you want to configure your fleet charging site will help inform the type and number of chargers you’ll need. If you decide to provide dedicated charging access to employees and for your delivery vehicles, you’ll likely need a combination of L2 and DCFCs. By utilizing an intelligent energy platform with a real-time fleet charging dashboard, you can maximize the number of chargers installed without needing to invest in expensive grid upgrades.  

In addition, using an enterprise-level management system will optimize charging times and power delivery for your fleet vehicles while integrating with your existing fleet management system and vehicle telematics provider.  

EV Charging Configurations for Your Business

While EV charging stations come in many different types, it is critical that the site is controlled by an intelligent energy management system. When your EV charging system incorporates intelligent charging and management, it distributes power to your chargers based on local power supply limits, driver schedules, and other inputs. These powerful capabilities allow your site to circumvent power and infrastructure limits, enabling you to maximize the number of chargers installed while avoiding expensive grid upgrades.  

Further, when you pair EV charging with solar and energy storage, you increase the amount of carbon emissions reduced since the chargers are being powered by zero-carbon electricity. It’s a tripling of savings in the sense that drivers are avoiding gasoline to power their vehicle, the electricity generated to power their car is zero-carbon, and they are not producing emissions while driving.  

In addition to how your EV charging site’s energy is managed, you’ll also need to think through payment and billing options. It’s of paramount importance that the payment process and experience for drivers is reliable, convenient, and seamless. Drivers want the confidence that when they arrive at a charging station, they will be able to promptly start and pay for their charging session without any delays or interruptions. Payment options include onboard credit card reader, a physical kiosk, and paying via mobile app. There are pros and cons to each payment method, and offering multiple options like a credit card reader and mobile app gives drivers the freedom to charge how they feel most comfortable.

(Related: How to Create an EV Charging Billing System)

Commercial EV Charging: A Promising Road Ahead

EV charging can unlock long-term value for your commercial business by decarbonizing, increasing revenues, and maintaining or increasing your property values. As the number of EVs on the road increases, the commercial enterprises that had the foresight to invest in EV charging will reap these benefits for years to come. While each site has its own set of challenges, there are configurable solutions that will help you think through the type, size, and location of your EV charging site. The future of EV charging for commercial applications is bright and we encourage you to continue exploring and evaluating options that will benefit your business. EV charging is a long-term investment — consult with the right expert to best design, configure, finance, and manage your charging site.