From Gas Stations to Shopping Centers: The Evolution of EV Charging

Speaker A: Welcome to Retail Retold. The stories behind how that store landed in your neighborhood. I'm Chris Ressa in conversation with the people and stories shaping retail and real estate brought to you by dlc.

Speaker B: This episode is sponsored by Arch Property Maintenance. Thank you for supporting Retail Retold. Learn more about Arch Property Maintenance at their website, www.archpropertymaintenance.com.

Speaker A: welcome to Retail Retold, everyone. Today I'm joined by Scott Levitan, the Executive Vice President of growth for EVgo, and Lane Chaplin, the head of real estate and retail portfolio partnerships at EVgo. I'm excited for them to be here. Welcome to the show guys.

Speaker C: Thank you for having us.

Speaker B: Nice to see you Chris.

Speaker A: You too. So Scott, why don't you tell a little bit more about who you are and how you ended up at evgo. And then Lane, you can go next.

Speaker B: Again, thanks for having uh, myself and Lane here. Um, I've been uh, at EVgo for two and a half years. Um, I spent uh, most of my career uh, in technology, uh, working at companies like Google for over 10 years. Um, and, and I was just really excited about the challenge of EV charging, which is how do we make, call it the future of transportation work for drivers everywhere. The solution that is the gas station is optimized for someone who needs to do something for three to four minutes and you have a very different world where all these people are going to be buying EVs and they need to do something that is going to take 25 to 35 minutes. So it's quite an interesting challenge that, that brought me here.

Speaker A: And you say technology, what did you do in technology?

Speaker B: A lot of my roles were we always talked about how you connect. You know we call it the user but like really like the human, the person with the magic. Like how do you make um, you know I worked for a while in uh, a startup ISP within Google. So how do we connect someone who needs not fast charging but super fast Internet with the product? So um, a lot about is how do you get people to know and want um, something that is part of the future. How do you build these really great, these important but so ah, called challenging categories.

Speaker A: Got it Lane. Tell a little bit about you and what you do.

Speaker C: Yeah, so um, a little background so in how we got to know each other. Started out at LA Fitness in the real estate world. Um, from there I went on to Tesla where started out in the real estate department, eventually went on to the charging. Org, um, where I led real estate for North America. Um, went on to a startup right after that at Hyperfuel, and then got uh, to EVgo roughly about nine months ago now. And um, really what my task is at the end of the day is to get us really quality sites. And I do that uh, in two ways. One is with the real estate side of things, which is uh, primarily ground leases and acquisitions. Um, and then on the retail portfolio partnership side, uh, that's more about doing um, I call it, probably the best way to understand it is uh, placing chargers on existing parking stalls. And um, my role is to do that with um, some of the largest REITs and retailers in the U.S.

Speaker A: excellent. So either one of you can you give us a little bit about evgo? Who is evgo, what you guys do and um, go from there.

Speaker C: You can go for that, Scott.

Speaker B: All right, so EVGO is, you know, basically we are a charging company and we're all about meeting the daily fast charging needs of people across the U.S. um, when someone buys an EV, it comes with this need to charge. And we're about making sure that people can get a fast charge wherever they are. Um, as of today we have about 1200 fast charging stations across the U.S. we have uh, some of the fastest um, charging um, anywhere. And the core of our business is to be where people meet their other needs. Um, and the biggest part of that is retail real estate.

Speaker A: Got it. And I got a million questions and I want to talk about what's going on in EV charging. EV charging generally. But uh, and I'm going to come at this from probably the perspective of someone who only has used gas powered cars for majority of their world. So when you look at a, an EV and you go and you set up at one of your EV charging station, seems like today one of the larger frictions is that it takes 25 or 30 minutes versus three or four minutes from getting gas today. But how is pricing compared to if I show up to an EV go? How is pricing versus if I'm filling up my tank and I assume in today's environment it might be pretty compelling. But how is pricing to fill up? For lack of a better word, um, my uh, ev.

Speaker B: Maybe we'll start, take the first part which is time, right? So if you come home, let's imagine you have home charging and a lot of people have home charging and you plug in, it could take you seven hours to charge your vehicle, right? But when you come home and you plug in and you walk in your house, you do what you do, you have dinner, you watch a show, in effect it's taking you zero like it's taking you the time it takes to plug in and unplug. So the effective time is no time. The same thing is if you go to, you know, you're going to go to the supermarket or go get a coffee and do the other stuff you need to do, you're going to, you're going to that, that mall anyways. So even though the charging itself takes 25 to 30 minutes, it's not taking you 25 to 30 minutes because you're doing the other thing that you want to do. Now, in terms of pricing, I think it depends really across the country. So in general, EV charging is substantially less expensive than, um, than filling up for gas. Uh, the pricing models are a little bit different. One of them is pricing differs based on the time at which you charge. If you charge in a similar way in which your electricity bill, you have a different rate if you charge during a peak hour or a non peak hour. So the rates differ. But in general, EV charging and the cost to operate an EV is substantially less than a, uh, than a, than a, than a similar gas vehicle.

Speaker A: If I combine the increase in my electric bill with charging up, is it still, uh, at a charging station when I'm out and about, am I still less than gas?

Speaker C: Yes, yes, yes, Substantially.

Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Uh, and also, and at the same time, the cost to operate the vehicle is substantially less. You know, there's no fluids. I mean, I've had Teslas, non Teslas, and I could say that in many years of owning EVs, I've been to the dealer once. Like, there is no scheduled maintenance. Um, but I will say there's one thing that costs more and everybody needs to know about an evidence you will use more tires. So, um, the one thing that costs more than other vehicle classes is tires. Because the cars are heavier, they use more tires. But overall, the cost to own, the cost to operate, including charging, whether you're charging at home or charging, um, like call it on the go, it's substantially less than a gas vehicle.

Speaker A: So over the last decade, there's been, it feels like from a property owner perspective, a gazillion different groups trying to get into this EV charging space, just constantly reaching out to us. Every day you woke up, there was like this new EV charging group and someone was raising money to create this. I'm assuming maybe it was past, you know, administrations, there was, you know, some economic incentives to having EV charging. What, what drove this proliferation of all these groups trying to get into this, uh, especially like while obviously it's growing, it's still smaller than the gas powered market. And I was just, I've just been shocked by how many different groups were trying to attack this space. And is it still that way?

Speaker C: Yeah, I can speak to that one a little bit. So you have a few things that went on there and I'll call out the most obvious ones. First, probably, um, there were a lot of CPOs that got into this thinking that the difficulty level was going to be minimal. In other words, they thought that you could, um, go to a gas station and put some of these in and the difficulty level wouldn't be that much different than putting in an air pump. Um, which they found out quickly is not the case. Um, other reasons for that is we had the government incentives and those are going away or have gone away. And um, unfortunately a lot of the CPOs, they put their business model, made their business model around, um, these nevi funds or other types of funds. In other words, they underwrote the site and they would only go after sites if they could get this government funding. Um, that's not a winning business model in my opinion. We at evgo, if they're available, we will go for them. So sometimes, but it never drives our site selection. And I think those are two of the biggest reasons. I think maybe a close third would be, you know, at the end of the day they saw this as a new profitable venture. And again, back to the kind of air pump example, they were looking at it purely from a dollar perspective instead of, you know, all the other things that go into EV charging. One of the biggest ones, um, frankly one of the things that my role entails is the customer experience at the end of the day. Like what is that customer experience? Are they, you know, having a frictionless experience or is it all these error messages that they're going to run into? You know, here are 14 things that you have to do to sign into an app before you can even maybe start use the charge, that kind of thing. And it's a bunch of factors that went into it that I don't think a lot of people really thought about.

Speaker A: Got it? When you said cpo, can you tell all the listeners what a CPO is?

Speaker C: Yeah, sorry, I'm speaking to my world a little bit. So CPO is charge point operator, but you can basically think of it as an EV charging, uh, company, own an operator company.

Speaker A: Got it. The. I think one of the things that people think about as a consumer and these charging stations are the ability to charge any EV vehicle versus a specified EV vehicle. And at EVgo, can you charge any EV vehicle?

Speaker B: Yes, you can, you can charge both. But there are two main standards of plugs. One is ccs, um, which is mostly on non Tesla vehicles And Tesla uses NACs, um, and that's proliferating in the industry. And our charging stations, we have both connectors as well as the ability to support folks that have adapters. So we meet the needs of every vehicle, um, out there.

Speaker A: And is this going to end up being like, you know, like Apple, how they have like a new charger come out every three years and it changes and gonna have to like change out your equipment?

Speaker B: No, uh, there is a real standardization happening in the industry. Uh, it's, I don't think there, there are forces out there that want it. You know, we want to have you know, one plug. Um, so, you know, so any, any charger can charge any vehicle. Um, yeah, so that's. Look, you know, this industry is still pretty new and we went through a pioneering phase. Right. So, and if you think about the pioneering journey, um, it sounds really nice when you're studying it in school, but along the way there are some bumps and this industry has gone through bumps and, and not everyone is, has been able to make it. And it's been a, like you said, there's been, there's been a bump and today, and I think the experts in this industry would all agree that charging has never been faster, it's never been easier to use. There's definitely a maturing in the business. Um, at the same time it's a business of scale like any others and there are really a number of players out there who have the size, scale and really the skills to be able to build, uh, to operate, to maintain, um, you know, what is in the end a pretty complex technology solution.

Speaker A: And uh, give me some stats on the EV market. How big is the EV market these days and what is the growth trajectory like? Give the listener some context. How many EVs are floating around there and how does that compare to gas powered vehicles?

Speaker B: There are about 6 million, um, EVs in operation right now.

Speaker A: Got it. So there's 6 million in operation. Has the used market gotten anywhere? Because that's one of the big things that'll help I'm sure, is if the used market takes off just like in gas powered.

Speaker C: Yeah, uh,

Speaker B: that's a really interesting question. So, um, there was this incentive, um, um, it was a federal incentive for purchasing an EV, which is, let's call it about a $7,500 incentive. And that made leases incredibly attractive for EVs. That incentive started to gain, like basically gain momentum in around April of 2023. Now you don't need to be that good at math to, to know that like a, a typical lease is about 3 years. So fast forward to April, May 2026. Where we are now is there is a tsunami of lease vehicles that are entering the used car marketplace. And a lot of those vehicles that are, that are leaving lease, um, are leaving, let's call it homes that tend to be with folks that are higher income single family homes that have home charging and they're moving to folks that, you know, more likely to either not own their home or to live in apartment and condos without charging. So the reliance of a used EV driver, um, compared to some of the older cohorts of new EV drivers on public charges is only going up and we're seeing this in the marketplace. So there's a massive number of EVs in many different, of the biggest auctions in the country. I believe it's already one one in five vehicles on auction coming off of

Speaker C: lease or EVs and very affordable too. Croc, I'll share. Which is why we think it's going to enter into a market that hasn't been thought of previously. I mean you can get a Tesla Model 3 these days, maybe three years old, for right around $20,000, which is, uh, incredible. And then the other part of that too, since we're talking used vehicles, uh, there's a myth out there about the battery degradation. You know, a lot of people think that, uh, you know, after it gets to about a hundred thousand, maybe even 150, that these things are going to be worthless. And the stats on that are actually quite different. What they found and the end of this, nobody really knows because EVs are kind of, you know, new in a lot of ways and they haven't made it to even the, you know, 500,000 mark, um, if they ever do. But um, the reality of it is the degradation happens like this initially and then it almost plateaus for the remainder and it goes down very, very incrementally. And so the reality is like going back to Scott's earlier point about the maintenance of these vehicles, um, very little things that can go wrong in an ev, right? Like you have, um, you don't have an engine in an ev. You don't, you don't have a transmission, you do have motors, but you don't have an engine. So a lot of the things that you would normally need to worry about once it gets to 150,000 miles. Uh, you just don't have an EV. So it's gonna be quite exciting in the next few years to see exactly where this market goes. And frankly I think the adoption, especially whenever you couple it with recent gas prices, we've already seen an uptick in that, but I think the adoption rate is just gonna continue to increase.

Speaker A: The battery you mentioned, let's say I just wanna replace the battery. Is that a crazy number to do that?

Speaker B: I will say it's, it's really not a thing, I'll say like it is

Speaker A: a

Speaker B: theoretical, it almost never happens. I mean there was just recent reports about all these vehicles with, you know, over 200,000 miles on them and you know, the batteries are still in, you know, 80ish percent, um, ah, operating at 85ish percent level. So the need to replace batteries for, you know, it seems to be a non issue. Um, and you know the data shows, and also anecdotally you don't hear of the need to replace batteries.

Speaker C: And even if you did, the ROI just wouldn't be there because you know, I haven't checked on it recently, but I know at one point in the last two years they were like $20,000 to do. But then you couple that with the amount of used EVs coming on the market and what you can get a used EV for, and by the time it got down to the point, uh, which again we're not totally certain it would, uh, that you would need to replace a battery, the ROI on it just makes sense to get a brand new vehicle.

Speaker A: And so in today's world, if the car's being built in 20, 26 per ride, how many, how many miles can the battery get me

Speaker B: a typical range will be, I would say like probably, you know, call it in the neighborhood of 300 miles. So call it 280 to the mid-30s. That is the, that's the default range of an evidence.

Speaker A: And I, I, I keep hearing they're trying to extend that, they're trying to extend that. And is that continued to be a work in progress?

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. You know, that's the average. But there are certain vehicles out there, like the GMC Hummer has two 800 volt batteries in that particular platform. Uh, and that one can get up at a 480ish. Um, so there are exceptions to that rule. Again, talking about the pioneer of this whole thing, EVs are a pioneer in this industry as much as EV charging and a Bunch of the older vehicles got around, you know, some of them even got like 80 miles to a charge. Then it kind of made its way up to 200. The Scott's point now we're around 300ish. Um, and, and I think that battery technology is going to continue to increase, especially because a lot of the older, uh, vehicles are not older, but you know, more established vehicles and older. We're on 400 volt platforms and there are vehicles out there, like the Cybertruck for example, that have 800 volt. So there, there are going to be a lot of uh, uh, different increases in technology whenever it comes to battery.

Speaker B: I'll say the issue of range and I'm not an automaker, so it doesn't appear to be one of. It's not a technology question anymore, it's a cost question. So how many, how many batteries do you want to put in the vehicle is going to be a decision and it would seem based on the decisions a wide range of automakers are making. Right. So whether for the Japanese, the Koreans to the Americans to Tesla, everyone seems to be anchoring on the driver need. Is that around that 300ish range and then making sure that there is enough availability of charging so to meet your needs when you have to leave that bubble.

Speaker A: And what about the charging? Is the world pretty comfortable with 25 to 30 minutes at a charging station or is there efforts being done to bring that down?

Speaker B: There are. So first of all, the reason, one of the beauties of kind of like the, why we have such a great relationship between retail, real estate and EV charging is it's a wonderful match. Let's call that uh, 25 to 35 minutes. Just, it connects so well with like the dwell time in a grocery store, which is about that amount. Um, and the frequency I believe, I think JLL says like there's 17.2 billion visits a year. So there's a great relationship between that, that amount of time. So charging is a great thing to do when you're going to go to grocery, you're going to go to a quick serve restaurant, you're going to go to get um, a cup of coffee. It's not ideal. When you're going to the movie theater, right, you need slower charging or maybe in the office you need slower charging. At the same time there are folks working on um, their reports out of China and technologies being tested that are, that we believe is going to bring the, the time to charge down. But that is definitely going to take some time. It's not Sufficient just to have the capabilities to charge. You need to have the capabilities in the vehicles and you need to frankly have, you know, the utility capacity to, to deliver that amount of power in that amount of time.

Speaker A: Got it. Super informative. Moving to the real estate side a bit. One of the interesting things, right, if you look at gas stations, uh, the way they deployed in America is their own freestanding building where you go specific to that. Whereas as charging came on, it was primarily to install stalls, uh, install charging installs in an existing parking lot that typically wasn't owned by the EV charging operator, but leased. And now there's some, but very limited where, you know, people are either ground leasing or buying a plot of land to build what the consumer might look to as something similar to a gas station, just purely for EV charging, but that is limited. Uh, and the primary is stalls in parking lots. I assume that deployment was just about speed to market and to get those out there. But is there other reasons for that reason that it's happened like that?

Speaker C: Yeah, I can share a little bit on that. So, and I can only speak to us, there are other companies out there that are going the more, let's call it C store gas station method for us. We don't want to be in that world. And there are a few reasons for that. And one of the main ones is that we want to be where our customers want to be and we want to lean on the expertise of the amenities, um, or the amenity operators that do what they do. In other words, I'll spell that out. At the end of the day, EVGO is not going to make the best coffee. That's just not our bread and butter. Right? We're EV charging. That's what we're doing. So we're not going to try to step into the shoes of a Starbucks. Starbucks knows what they do. They're a mastercraft in what they do. And our customers frankly want that experience along with the charging experience that we provide. So I guess there was some speed to market in that, that analysis and there probably still is some. Um, but one of the main things that drive our site selection is that amenitization and leaning on the expertise of the people who know what they know how to do to lean into that just a tad bit more. What was Scott was referring to with the grocers that the cyclical timing of that is so key? We were talking about LA Fitness earlier and I'm shocked a lot of the times how many similarities there are with that, because with an EV charging station, you need time to build up the knowledge that that uh, charging station is actually there. And basically a lot of the same ways that a gym needs to build up a membership with gyms, we would look at it as it's a daily needs. The 1.5 trips to that shopping center being next to a sprouts is a very good opportunity for that gym customer to go into the gym, then come into the sprouts, uh, and then head back home. Because they could kill two birds with one stone. Very similar to that. But for EV charging, um, we need to provide them enough time to plug the car in to the charger and then go into the supermarket and shop. So we don't need to like have the whole time or uh, we don't need to have like two stagger times for them to get done what they need to do. Um, and so that, that drives a lot of our site selection too.

Speaker B: But Chris, maybe, maybe I'm going to add something because it's a great question. It really gets to the heart of why EV charging is a different real estate solution. The gas station with this, the convenience store is an incredible innovation. But it's. The convenience store is optimized to spend three to five minutes inside. I don't want to horrify your listeners but like imagine 25 minutes like that is not the place. And I'm sorry, I don't mean to speak ill of anyone, but that is not a 20, 30 minute solution like you would get with what you would see at uh, a kind of a retail outdoor grocery anchored shopping center with three QSRs and a coffee shop. That's a place to spend 30 minutes. I see.

Speaker A: I got it. That makes sense. So I think the listener has a very good view on the real estate solution from a product type. Um, how do you guys think about market penetration and what markets to go to?

Speaker C: I mean the high level of that is we want to be where our customers want to be, right. And we want to be in the areas that have a lack of EV charging, fast EV charging. Um, and we want to be in an area where, you know, things like single family homes are considered right and not where necessarily single family homes are. Um, so site selection is really at the end of the day, a calculus of vios vehicles in operation in that particular market, amenitization within that particular center that we're looking at and ease of access.

Speaker B: I mean it's definitely not perfectly EV charging is actually understatement is not evenly distributed across the US even across major metropolitan markets. So you have some markets that are stronger. So you really need to, again, in the earlier phase that we're in, you want to be where drivers are. Um, so we are, um. We have kind of a pretty good, you know, base to know. Like, let's, let's build in these areas now and other areas will evolve a little bit later.

Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think it's an easy call on market penetration because, like, I think as a consumer and I don't own an EV vehicle, one of the things I would be looking at is, I guess in my typical drive, what is the access to consistent and, uh, a significant amount of EV charging stations. And if there's less, I'm probably not going to buy one. And for. For you all, you want the person to already have the car there. Right. So that, you know you have customers. So I think there's a little bit of a chicken and egg. And I imagine you're playing in that sandbox where there already are. And then you are strategically thinking about what are the. The market, the path to growth markets. Like, what's going to be a next market that we could take a shot on? We're not there. You know, the EV cars are not there yet, but we think this is a next market where they will. And you're probably doing that prudently in not a ton of spots. But I think that's, uh, an interesting conundrum.

Speaker B: Absolutely. So you want to be early, not too early. You want to try to manage your market penetration. That's something we do. We've also worked really hard over the past couple years with a company many of you know, kind of your listeners will know, pilot Flying J. They, they own, uh, truck stops kind of on interstates. And, and we built almost 300 different charging stations on these truck stops. So in that event that you're doing a road trip and you're going, it doesn't matter if you're going San Francisco to Salt Lake City or, or New York to Charlotte, like that there is charging along the way. Um, and that's another investment we've been making and working really hard on. Even if early on, like, you know, the utilization is not. It's not as big because it's emerging, but it's. But it's been an investment that's worth making.

Speaker A: I'll give you one lane a couple years ago, uh, if you know, uh, in the Southern states, there's something called Stuckeys.

Speaker C: Very familiar.

Speaker A: Okay, so.

Speaker C: Pecan log.

Speaker A: The pecan log. You got it. I don't know If Stephanie Stuckey is the granddaughter or the daughter of the founder. And she said, one of the best, funniest site selection things I ever heard, she said. And I asked her, I said, so how do you choose where Stuckey's is? And she's like, ah, I think it was her grandfather. She was like, my grandfather had the best strategy. She was like, he would go to his Stuckey's, he would grab a cup of coffee and he would drink the cup of coffee and he would get in his car and when he had to use the restroom, that's where the next Stuckies should go.

Speaker C: I mean there is a methodology to that. Right?

Speaker A: I thought that was amazing. Uh, so, okay, well listen guys, this has been, uh, a great market overview, definitely great EVGO overview as well. Lane, our listeners like deals. Can you tell us about an interesting story of a, of a deal you guys have worked on or, and how you got, uh, some chargers somewhere?

Speaker C: Yeah, um, maybe what I'll do is not maybe focus on an individual deal as far as a site, but maybe focus in on uh, what my role entails. Right. Doing these enterprise agreements. Um, and I can't use names, but, um, what I will tell you is that uh, there is one landlord in particular who, you know, and this is pretty much ridiculous throughout the industry and it's something that we've done a really hard, um, job trying to remediate. And that is kind of the reputation of EV charging as a whole in retail real estate. I mean we've known each other for a long time. Like, I don't like to sweep things under the rug. It's a real thing. Right. Like a lot of these landlords took chances on EV charging back in the day. Maybe the technology wasn't there, maybe the promises that were made to these landlords, uh, didn't come to fruition. And so it's, they weren't as well

Speaker A: capitalized as they, as they came as they led on. I think that was one of the issues. And so then, you know, as the technology changed, as things happened, they're like kind of the, there's like some zombie chargers out there along the way.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it's true. Right. And so one of the biggest things that we've had to do, um, at evgo and other CPOs is to try to remediate that reputation, try to revitalize that reputation. And you're not going to do it with promises, you're going to do it with results. And so one of the things that I wanted to share is that for These large enterprise agreements, right. We went into this situation where there was a landlord in, they had a really, really bad time uh, with EV charging in the past they've tried it. All the things that I just mentioned kind of came to fruition and then some. And really at the end of the day it was what does this landlord really need at the end of the day? And ultimately it's trust. They want to trust that whenever they put these things in that there's going to be an operator that keeps them well maintained, optimized and operational throughout the duration of the term. And so long story short is that we went into an agreement where we could do, you know, maybe one or two. Um, we did a good job all the way through permitting and site opening and then the first, let's call it six months of operation. Um, and then that kind of led the conversation forward. One of the big things that, that I try to focus on is not necessarily reputation. I think that's the wrong thing to focus on. I think you need to focus on integrity because once you focus on that, reputation will be a byproduct if you're doing it the right way. Um, and so with this particular landlord they've now become one of our biggest and uh, they, they recommend us to other landlords. Um, and it was not the easiest to get through. Uh, but a uh, lot of that was self inflicted that we, we made right. Um, from, from previous times till now.

Speaker A: Well after this call we're going to have to really go through the portfolio. Ours has grown and see where we have opportunities. Lane, I um, would love that. So I guess you mentioned something though real quick. How long is it taking to go from LOI to open?

Speaker C: It's a good question. And what I'll say from the outset is that for us to build a site, let's say on average you're looking at eight weeks. Like that's from shovels in the ground to site opening, from LOI through permitting and all of these other things. The biggest lead time is going to be your utility provider, which is a third party that you can't control. Neither one of us can control. I mean we've been in these and we love the utilities, right? Like we have great relationships with them. Um, for the most part, uh, all around the US we have a internal utility team called the grid team, which actually came from a lot of those utility providers. So that helps too. But that's the largest lead time at the end of the day and it's the most unpredictable, right? I mean we've been in situations, Chris, where utility provider said, yes, utilities will be there by February. And then in June, we're, we're following up to see, hey, guys, what's going on? So all that's to say is that on average, from the time that an LOI assigned to a site's opening, let's call it 18 months. And one of the biggest things, and I don't want to put this all on the utility, uh, companies because it's not, um, our demand for power is very significant. Uh, so even if everything checks the boxes up until that point, uh, you're still having to bring a transformer to every site. Ah, a minimum of one.

Speaker A: So I think our listeners understand what that means. One thing that just dawned on me is there's obviously with AI, there's all this talk about capacity and demand and, you know, the demand for power being higher than the supply right now. And has that impacted you guys? All this chatter and data centers and AI companies trying to access more power. Has that been impactful to you guys?

Speaker B: It is likely less impactful than other factors.

Speaker A: Got it.

Speaker B: Because, like, we're typically dealing with called like, you know, power at a distribution versus a transmission level. So it's about resources and time, um, a lot more than pure capacity. It's about how we get into that queue, which is pretty busy. And then, you know, you can have a hurricane, you can have some events like what happened in la, and that can create, you know, a reprioritization, uh, among utilities of resources. So that pushes things back. So utilities are definitely a factor that, you know, anybody in this business needs to be really, really good at. Um, you know, we like to say that if you build it, they will come is a great line in a great movie. It's just not reflecting reality. Like, there's a. That's why there's going to be growing consolidation in this business. And like, like any other, you know, you need to, you need to, you need to be a pro in your own craft.

Speaker A: Well, listen, guys, this has been fantastic. Are there any questions I should have asked you? I'm, um, an EV novice that I didn't ask you all.

Speaker C: Yeah, I. One of the things maybe I'll leave your listeners with and then hand it off to Scott is, um, you know, you're a landlord and there are other landlords who are gonna listen to this podcast and they're trying to figure out this whole landscape. To your point earlier, everybody and their mother is coming up to you, say, you know, I have chargers. I'd Love to do business at your centers. So the question is, which one do you choose? And I'll leave you with two thoughts on that. Um, one is, what is that company's business model? Right? Is it maintenance, uh, agreements, Are they trying to sell you chargers? Um, or is that business model built primarily, if not exclusively off of utilization? What's their ongoing source of revenue? Uh, that's number one.

Speaker A: There was a lot of companies that reached out to me that I felt like a lot of their revenue was selling ads on the chargers. I don't know if that is still a thing, but that was. I got pitched. Those guys pitched me for sure.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: You're nodding your head. I guess you're familiar with those, Scott, those companies?

Speaker B: Absolutely. It was like, maybe good in theory, but not. It didn't work out well in practice.

Speaker C: Yeah. And a lot of these companies, I mean, well, a lot of the landlords, frankly, I think they think about it through one half of the full equation. And what we mean by that is, um, is this cpo, uh, well, capitalized to where they can come in and install chargers and open for day one. And that's pretty much where they stop the analysis. And my argument is that's only one half of the equation. What is that company's ongoing business model? And if it's not built primarily off of utilization? I have a lot of concerns. Um, as it currently stands, this is third party data from a company called Perrin P A R E N, um, which anybody can have access to. Um, there are only really three CPOs currently that have the sustainable business model when it comes to utilization. I'll name them. There's three are Tesla, electrify, America and US and everybody else's sub 5%. Some are even at 2%. And that concerns me greatly. And I'll share this too. I want there to be about four or five really, really good CPO operators at the end of the day. Um, multiple reasons. Right. It gives legitimacy to the business. We can go to icses, uh, Chris, and if we're talking real estate, we say square footage and cam and we know exactly what we're talking about. Um, there's a lot of different things in the EV world that, you know, frankly, people aren't familiar with. So I think that's a good thing. Um, but the reality of it is that there's only really three that have that sustainable business model right now. And the other thing I'll say here at the end is, um, uh, to me it's not determinative about whether or not you pick X CPO over another. But, you know, it's no secret. Like, I was at Tesla, and I was in charging, and, you know, April 30th of 2024 was, uh, a time, right? And it was a time that a company decided that it wanted to pivot, um, in certain ways. And so the question, at the end of the day, I would have is, what is this company's main thesis? Is it EV charging only, or is it part of a company, you know, that's doing automobile sales? Are they doing, you know, all the other things that you can put into that list, or is it EV charging? Um, again, not definitive on whether or not you should choose that one, but I think it's part of the calculus.

Speaker A: Got it. Thank you, Lane. Scott, anything I didn't ask that I should have?

Speaker B: Um, perhaps a question around. What's the view of. Let's call it some of the leaders. What are we hearing from leaders in real estate, Whether it's the largest retailers or the largest REITs, and I think we've got a couple. What we're seeing is the folks that are in charging are going deeper, and the folks that are not in charging are quickly coming to the realization it's time to start the journey. Um, so let's call it. The smart money in the industry is going deeper into the world of EV charging, and I think there's a good understanding that, you know, the electric vehicles. We could debate how fast, but it's not an if it happens question. It's a how fast it happens question. And that's, I think, really important for folks in retail real estate.

Speaker A: Well, Scott and Lane, thank you so much. This was fantastic. I really appreciate the time today. And, uh, Lane, I'll reach out after.

Speaker C: Sounds great. I'm looking forward to a. Uh, thanks again for having us.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker B: Thank you.