Why Turnkey Providers Are the Best Choice for Commercial EV Charging Projects

The U.S. had about 196,000 public EV charging ports as of January 2025. Sounds like a lot until you learn there are over 7.3 million registered plug-in vehicles on American roads. That’s roughly one public charger for every 36 EVs. The gap between what drivers need and what exists right now is enormous — and for retail and commercial property owners, that gap is where the opportunity sits.

Installing EV chargers at your property isn’t some futuristic nice-to-have anymore. Over 1.2 million new EVs sold in the U.S. last year alone. These drivers need somewhere to charge when they’re away from home, and they’re actively choosing where to shop, eat, and spend time based on whether charging is available. A Numerator study found that 61% of EV owners said they’re more likely to shop at retailers that have charging stations. That’s foot traffic walking through your door specifically because you have plugs in your parking lot.

But getting chargers installed at a commercial property? That’s where most people hit a wall. The permitting, the electrical work, the equipment selection, the software, the ongoing maintenance — it stacks up fast. This is exactly why retail commercial ev charging solutions through turnkey providers have become the go-to approach for commercial properties. They handle everything from site assessment through to ongoing operations, which means you get charging infrastructure without becoming an expert in electrical engineering.

The installation is more complicated than people expect

You might assume installing EV chargers is similar to adding any other electrical fixture. It isn’t. A commercial charging installation involves electrical capacity assessments, utility interconnection applications, local building permits, ADA compliance for accessible parking, trenching and conduit work if the electrical panel isn’t near the parking area, and choosing between different charging levels that have wildly different power requirements.

Level 2 chargers run on 240-volt circuits and cost between $3,500 and $15,000 per port installed, including hardware and electrical work. DC fast chargers are a different animal entirely — they need 480-volt three-phase power and can run anywhere from $28,000 to over $140,000 per station installed. If your building doesn’t already have the right electrical service, you’re looking at transformer upgrades and utility work that can add $12,000 to $15,000 or more on top of the charger costs.

Most commercial property managers don’t have the electrical engineering knowledge to navigate this, and why would they? Their job is running a property, not designing charging infrastructure. A turnkey provider brings in the engineers, handles the utility coordination, pulls the permits, and manages the contractors. You sign off on the plan and they execute it.

The money part

Cost is obviously the big question, and the answer depends heavily on what kind of chargers you’re installing and what your site looks like electrically. But there’s more to the financial picture than just installation costs.

The federal 30C Alternative Fuel Infrastructure Tax Credit offers a 30% tax credit on charger hardware and installation costs. For commercial properties, that’s capped at $100,000 per charging port. There’s even a bonus 10% credit (bumping it to 40% total) if your property sits in a low-income or non-urban census tract. On top of federal incentives, most states run their own programs California’s CALeVIP provides thousands per port, New York’s Charge Ready NY program offers direct rebates, and the NEVI Formula Program allocated $5 billion through 2026 specifically for public EV charging infrastructure.

A turnkey provider typically knows these incentive programs inside and out and handles the applications as part of their service. Figuring out which federal, state, and utility incentives your specific property qualifies for, and then actually submitting the paperwork correctly — that alone saves a significant amount of time and potentially tens of thousands of dollars. Plenty of property owners miss available funding simply because they didn’t know it existed or didn’t apply within the right window.

One important note on federal incentives: the political situation around EV funding has been shifting. The 30C tax credit is currently set to run through 2032, but legislation has been proposed that could end it earlier. NEVI funding saw a temporary pause in early 2025 under an executive order, though states have since been allowed to resume many projects. A good turnkey provider stays on top of these changes and adjusts project timelines accordingly.

What chargers actually do for your property

The revenue from charging fees matters, but it’s almost secondary to what happens inside your building while cars are plugged in.

A ChargePoint case study found that installing Level 2 chargers at a retail location increased customer dwell time by 50 minutes on average. Research from NMI found that 89% of EV drivers make a purchase while waiting for their vehicle to charge, and that having a Tesla Supercharger near a retailer increased revenue by 5%. An Escalent study showed that 45% of EV drivers said they’d spend more time in a store to let their car charge more, even if they didn’t specifically need to charge that day.

That dwell time translates directly into spending. When you keep someone in or near your store for an extra 30 to 50 minutes, they buy things. Coffee. Groceries. That jacket they weren’t planning on. The charging fee might be a few dollars, but the in-store spending while someone waits is where the real return shows up.

EV owners also skew younger, higher-income, and more brand-conscious than average vehicle owners. Numerator’s data showed 42% of EV owners are Gen Z or Millennials, and 44% come from high-income households. That’s a demographic most retailers would pay good money to attract — and charging stations do it automatically.

For commercial office properties, the angle is different but equally real. The U.S. Department of Energy found that 80% of employers with EV charging stations said it helped them attract and retain talent. Employees charge during work hours, which means they’re not leaving the office to hunt for public chargers. Tenants see charging availability as a building amenity that justifies premium rents, similar to on-site gyms or covered parking.

Why doing it yourself usually goes sideways

Some property owners look at the costs and think they can manage the installation themselves — hire an electrician, buy some chargers online, figure out the rest as they go. Occasionally this works for a simple two-port Level 2 setup. More often, it creates problems.

The electrical assessment alone requires someone who understands commercial load calculations, demand charges from your utility, and how adding charging infrastructure affects your building’s peak power draw. Get this wrong and you could face demand charge spikes that cost thousands per month, or worse, trip breakers during peak usage because the electrical panel can’t handle the combined load of building operations plus multiple vehicles charging simultaneously.

Then there’s the software side. Modern commercial chargers need network connectivity for payment processing, user authentication, energy management, and usage monitoring. Someone needs to manage that backend, keep it updated, and troubleshoot when a driver’s payment doesn’t go through at 11pm on a Saturday. DC fast chargers also have cooling systems, filters, and components that need regular maintenance — they’re industrial equipment, not wall-mounted boxes.

Turnkey providers bundle all of this. Site assessment, electrical design, equipment procurement, installation, software setup, payment integration, ongoing maintenance, and usually 24/7 driver support. You get one contract, one point of contact, and a guaranteed working system instead of juggling six different vendors and hoping everything integrates properly.

The charging network is growing fast — and so is competition

The U.S. added over 18,000 new DC fast-charging ports in 2025 alone, bringing the national total past 70,000 DCFC ports by year’s end. Public fast-charging sessions hit an estimated 141 million in 2025, up roughly 30% from the previous year. Walmart, Starbucks, 7-Eleven, Circle K — major retail brands are pouring money into charging infrastructure because they’ve seen the data on what it does for customer traffic and spending.

If your competitor across the street installs chargers and you don’t, EV drivers have a very simple reason to go there instead of coming to you. The window to be early on this is closing. Properties that install now capture the growing EV driver demographic while the infrastructure is still sparse enough that having chargers is a genuine competitive advantage. Wait another three years and you’re just catching up to baseline expectations.

A turnkey provider gets you from decision to operational chargers faster than trying to coordinate the project internally. Most can move from site assessment to installation in weeks rather than the months it takes when a property manager is learning the process from scratch. In a market where timing matters, that speed has real value.