EV Charging for Auto Dealerships

Stock charging is where the supply goes

A yard of electric stock needing periodic top-up is a large, continuous and entirely schedulable load. It is the ideal candidate for aggressive load management, because nothing is urgent and everything can wait for headroom.

Handover needs a deadline, not a rate

A vehicle handed over at eleven needs a target state of charge by then, not the fastest possible rate. Departure-aware allocation serves this precisely and uses far less supply than charging everything at maximum.

The dealership is also the support route

Customers whose home charger fails will contact the dealership, not the charger supplier. Whether the dealer sells and supports home charging is a commercial decision that should be made deliberately, because the support burden arrives either way.

A dealership is three charging problems, not one

Dealerships tend to install one charging solution and then discover it is being asked to do three different jobs.

• Customer demonstration, where speed is visible and the vehicle is on site briefly
• Workshop and PDI, where vehicles need charging reliably and predictably rather than quickly
• Staff and long-stay parking, where dwell time is a full day and scheduling can move the whole load off the peak

Only the first has any argument for high power. The other two are ordinary AC charging where availability and scheduling matter more, and sizing the whole site against the demonstration case is how dealerships end up paying for a supply upgrade they use for twenty minutes a week.

How we work with you on this

Dealerships are usually sold one solution for three different jobs, and the specification ends up driven by the demonstration case.

We would rather work through the three separately with your aftersales and facilities teams, which normally means fewer fast points than were quoted and more ordinary ones. That reduces the order. It also stops you paying for a supply upgrade you use for twenty minutes a week.

The community model suits a dealership

It is the same arrangement we build for apartments and it fits here for the same reasons: users and access are managed locally, and nothing depends on a subscription or a connection.

• Customers charge for a set duration during a visit, with a limit you decide
• Or they charge on a paid basis, billed from what was recorded
• Access controlled locally, so staff, workshop and customer use are separable
• No app for a visiting customer to install

Buying alongside the vehicles

Dealers frequently need chargers to supply to customers as well as to install on their own forecourt.

We support that on volume terms, at rates suited to a dealer supplying chargers with vehicles rather than buying one at a time. If that is part of what you are planning, say so at the start, because it changes the commercial arrangement rather than just the quantity.