It’s an odd moment for electric vehicles. Sales and leases have been surging ahead of the expiration of federal tax credits on September 30th. But even without tax credits, Ford, GM, and Nissan are all pushing ahead with new generations of more affordable EVs slated to hit the market in the next few years.

The bottom line is there will be more electric vehicles on American roads, and they’ll all need places to charge. A growing number of companies see a business opportunity in providing more chargers and a better charging experience.

Like many EV drivers, Ron Matherly has had some frustrating attempts at charging. His main complaint about charging his 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning is that a lot of the supposedly fast chargers he’s used don’t perform as advertised.

Shortly after he bought his electric truck in 2023, the retired chemist plugged it into a charger outside a mall near his Houston-area home. When he came back, it wasn’t charging at the 250 kilowatt per hour rate he expected, “but they were still charging me the 25 cents a minute.”

Matherly’s truck had barely charged. He kept having this same problem at other chargers too. Which, he said, led to range anxiety: The fear that if he were to drive too far from home, he might get stranded.

But that changed when Tesla opened up its national network of fast chargers to other brands. Matherly tried one at a gas station with a big convenience store attached, and got a full charge in 30 minutes. While his truck filled up, he browsed the store’s aisles and bought some food. 

“Get you two different ways, so to speak,” he said.

This business model here may seem kind of obvious: Offer reliable, fast charging and something for customers to do (and spend money on) for 30 minutes or so. But it’s taken awhile for two big industries to really figure it out: Carmakers and retailers.

Auto manufacturers have a vested interest in adopting this model. If they improve the charging experience, they can likely sell more EVs, said Loren McDonald, chief analyst with the charging data firm Paren.

“One of the single biggest reasons that consumers are not adopting EVs is because they're concerned about public charging,” he said.

Then, there’s retail — specifically, convenience stores.

“That industry woke up in the last couple years, realizing, ‘oh my god, if these EV drivers plug in and come inside the store, we have this captive audience,” McDonald said.

Automakers and retailers now plan to add tens of thousands of plugs across the U.S. in the next few years. The convenience industry feels like it has a head start in this race.

“The saturation is already there, the locations are already there, the amenities and the attributes that drivers want are already there,” said Karl Doenges, the EV and advanced mobility liaison for the National Association of Convenience Stores.

He said convenience stores and gas stations should prepare to offer EV charging and the amenities EV drivers might want while they wait to charge: More restrooms, quick service restaurants, and lots of convenience items for sale.

Gas stations, Doenges said, have an obvious advantage: People are used to fueling their cars at them. But he cautions gas station owners that they can’t count on a monopoly.

“A lot of different businesses can offer electricity,” he said.

Including carmarkers. After watching the success of Tesla’s charging network, more of them are getting into the charging game, like Mercedes-Benz.

The upscale German automaker created a company, Mercedes-Benz High Power Charging, to build a high-speed charging network in North America. It plans to build about 250 locations across the continent, said CEO Andrew Cornelia.

“It has to work every single time, it has to be fast charging, but really what we’re focused on is what you do while you charge,” Cornelia said.

A lot of Mercedes-Benz stations have lounges, food and canopies over the chargers. Or, they’re next to a Starbucks or a mall. Another joint venture of eight car companies called IONNA is rolling out a similar concept. IONNA is also working with two gas station chains to add chargers at their properties. It plans to install 30,000 or more charging ports across North America by 2030.

Then there’s a big business that could give both convenience stores and car companies a run for their charging money: Walmart. It's working on its own massive charging network, which it plans to roll out over the next five years.

“There's 4,600 or so Walmart stores just here in the U.S.,” said Adam Happel, who’s leading Walmart’s retail charging business. “We're targeting installing it at as many locations as we can, knowing that it'll be literally thousands and thousands of the stores.”

If all of these chargers from retailers and carmakers get built as promised, it could be a lot easier to juice up your EV in a few years. In some parts of the country, said Loren McDonald at the consulting firm Paren, those chargers could even start to outpace demand.

“Maybe the good thing of that is those more recalcitrant buyers in those markets will go, ‘wow, there's a charger on every corner. I guess I can now get an EV,’” he said.

If you build it, they will come. Or, at least, that’s what companies are betting on.