Multi-family housing developers and retailers have a lot in common.
Both depend on consumers, are driven by consumer behavior, and are looking for ways to differentiate themselves from the competition in the battle for customer loyalty.
Today, consumers are demanding green, especially in the parking lot.
While electric vehicles are expected to account for just 3% of the global vehicle fleet by the end of 2023, EV adoption is gaining such momentum that, according to Bloomberg, it’s “one of the fastest-moving parts of the global energy transition.”
Retailers like Starbucks, Subway, and Taco Bell are among the latest to jump on the EV bandwagon, with services ranging from EV chargers in store parking lots to governmental partnerships to electrify key transportation routes.
The U.S. government, among others worldwide, is investing in a greener future with $7.5 billion earmarked for building out the national EV charging infrastructure. Since 2020, EV sales have tripled, with more than 3 million EVs now on the road, and the number of publicly available charging ports has grown by 40%, to more than 130,000.
In many places, the push for EV charging also mirrors consumer behavioral changes about their expectations from retailers and residences.
While traditional shopping malls have been shunted aside by online commerce, some developers are amping up their efforts to re-claim valuable space with residential tenants.
From antique shopping malls like Arcade Providence in Rhode Island, to a newly built apartment building alongside the Springfield Town Center in surburban Washington, D.C., mall owners are responding to an emerging desire for “live-work-place communities.”
And from multi-family housing to office buildings and office parks, from retail sites to hospitality, consumers are asking for green energy options.
For propery developers and managers, it’s not about the charging stations.
It’s about managing your EV charging infrastructure in a way that will become a value-added service for you and the tenants who use the chargers.
To keep pace with the rising demand for on-site EV charging services, you’ll need to:
- Take control over your charging infrastructure, from monitoring usage and consumption, to being alerted to hardware malfunctions, to be able to do things like unlock and reset remotely.
- Manage access to charge points for different user groups, like tenants or guests, all while providing for different fees and usage rights.
- Enable streamlined and transparent payment processing and EV roaming across other networks, all under your app.
With a white-labeled EV management solution, your choice of charging stations is up to you. And you’ll be able to offer turnkey EV charging management solutions for new builds and adapt existing sites and measure and charge for consumption based on variables like charging time, length of stay, or loyalty programs.
A platform approach will also help you navigate governmental incentive initiatives designed to spur green growth.
If anything, global pressure to reduce carbon emissions is only growing. Take, for example, the recent United Nations call for rich countries to speed up their goal for achieving net-zero emissions by a decade.
By taking an EV platform approach, property and multi-family building developers can be part of the solution. You’ll be able to launch EV charging quickly and cost-effectively, monetize charging in a transparent and easy-to-manage way, and you’ll position your properties to be more desirable for your tenants and for the environment.