A DCFC Convenience Store case study

I recently saw this article about a DCFC at Rotten Robbie's, a convenience/gas station in San Jose, CA, and this bit caught my eye:

"At a Rotten Robbie gas station in San Jose, management is running an experiment: they've installed two EV charging stations on site, so they can be a spot where people fuel up and charge up. But the results haven't been all that promising, said Robinson Oil and Rotten Robbie Gas Stations CEO?Erin Graziosi.

"We average about one-and-a-half EV customers per day between the four charging points," she said. "We make little to no money. I mean, it cost more to put in than we make on any revenue coming out of it."

Looking at the site on Plugshare, it appears they installed Freewire stations on the EV Connect network.

It's a bit surprising that they only have 1.5 EV customers per day in what seems to be a great location in San Jose, CA, an area with a high concentration of EV drivers, but let's do some investigation.

First, I filtered Plugshare by removing Tesla Superchargers and then only showed stations above 50kW charging speed, and the below is what we see (Rotten Robbie's circled in green):

There are a decent amount of DCFC options just north of this location, with the two closest being highly rated EVgo (northeast) and Electrify America (northwest) stations. These locations have around 5 stations each and generally get good reviews.

I'm not really sure why they "average about one-and-a-half EV customers per day between the four charging points" in what seems like it would be a high traffic area. One thing to point out is that they have 4 charging cables (2 CCS, 2 CHadeMO), but only 2 stations so only 2 stations can be used at the same time.

One thought is EV drivers are choosing to go to EVgo and Electrify America that have more stations so a higher probability of finding a vacant one.

Another thought is EV drivers might be wary of a depleted Freewire station that only delivers around 22 kW (if battery was depleted by a previous driver). But since utilization is so low the odds of this happening should also be low (driver perception is another matter).

Finally, reading PlugShare reviews it seems there was a long stretch when the stations may not have been working which may have steered drivers away. From 4/24/22 - 9/1/22 there were 5 negative reviews in a row, without a single person reporting a good charging experience:

For 1/3rd of 2022 there wasn't a single positive charging experience recorded on PlugShare at this site! Surely that has some impact on whether EV drivers decide to stop and charge at this station. Since 9/1/22 all experiences have been positive...but you only get once chance to make a positive first impression.

The biggest takeaway I have here is that in order to achieve high utilization at a DCFC location, the DCFC needs to be treated as a small business in and of itself. That means the below items need to occur and deliver excellent:

• Marketing and Advertising
• Quality
• Customer Experience
• Competitive Offering

If any of the above slips, the small DCFC business may not live up to expectations.