Public EV charging is often pitched to local businesses as a way to bring customers through the door. New research commissioned by the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water offers some evidence about what drivers do while charging, but it also shows why a spending statistic needs careful reading.
Researchers surveyed 454 NSW EV drivers and 51 regional businesses. A separate analysis used anonymous payment transactions around public charging sessions across more than 100 NSW postcodes. The department reports that one in three sessions was linked to spending at nearby businesses, with an average of $41 spent locally within 90 minutes of charging.
Association is not the same as extra sales
The payment data links charging and purchases in a window of time and place. It does not establish that the charger caused the purchase. A driver might have planned to shop there anyway, or might have chosen the charger because it was close to a shop they already intended to visit. The department’s summary does not provide a comparison with otherwise similar sites without chargers, so the $41 should not be treated as guaranteed new revenue for a prospective host.
The survey offers a different kind of information: what drivers say about their behaviour. Among respondents, 67 per cent reported spending more at nearby businesses while charging than they had on earlier petrol or diesel stops. The same proportion said they chose accommodation offering EV charging. Those are self-reported responses, not figures measured from the payment data.
Drivers surveyed also described the places they looked for when planning a public charge. Shopping centres were selected by 56 per cent, cafés by 53 per cent and supermarkets by 48 per cent. The answers help explain why a walkable charging site may be more useful to a driver, and more commercially interesting to its neighbours, than one isolated from food, toilets and shops.
Public charging is not only for road trips
The transaction analysis found 65 per cent of charging sessions occurred within 40 kilometres of home, rising to 83 per cent in metropolitan areas. The survey separately found that 79 per cent of respondents typically charged at home, while 70 per cent had used public chargers. Those measures describe different questions and samples, not a contradiction: a driver can charge at home most of the time and still use a public charger close to home.
For regional businesses, the department reports that 43 per cent of accommodation businesses surveyed saw more enquiries after installing a charger. That is a self-report from the businesses in the study, not a projection for every motel or caravan park in NSW. Site access, reliable hardware, charging speed, passing traffic and nearby amenities will all affect whether a particular installation is useful.
NSW is inviting businesses, property owners and councils to register interest in hosting a public charger. Its site-host guidance says a charge-point operator may contact a suitable host and would typically arrange and pay for the charging equipment, while the host provides parking and access. An expression of interest is not a funding approval or a promise that an operator will install a charger. The study makes the case for considering chargers near useful destinations, but not for assuming that every plug produces $41 of extra trade.