EVwire brief: Electric Era has put a number on which US retailers take EV charging most seriously. Its new Retail EV Charging Index ranks the top 50 chains by charging "maturity," and the results lean heavily toward gas stations, convenience stores and travel centers, with Wawa in first place.
The ranking is a weighted score: Scale counts for 55%, Experience 20%, Quality 15% and Momentum 10%. In plain terms, how many stations you run matters most, but there's a catch. Owning your chargers is worth four times as much as simply letting a third party install them on your lot, so a chain that owns 10 sites scores the same on scale as one that only hosts 40.
BP took second place in Electric Era’s rankings, though the number of its deployed stations is notably lower than Wawa, which took first place.
That formula rewards the fuel-and-convenience crowd. Wawa, BP, Applegreen, Pilot Flying J, Sheetz and 7-Eleven all land in the top 10, joined by big-box chains with sprawling parking lots: Walmart, Target and Costco. Wawa's first-place case shows what the index prizes: more than 275 stations, a foot in the charging game since 2017, and its own branded, increasingly owned network.
Because scale and ownership drive the score, having the most retail EV chargers doesn't guarantee a high rank. As per the rankings, grocery is the laggard. Eleven of the top 50 are grocers, but most sit in the bottom half, usually with a handful of third-party chargers and no tie to the store's own brand or app. The exceptions, like Meijer and Kroger, are the ones that partnered with a national network to build a real portfolio. Whole Foods Market, which actually has the most Level 2 chargers at 389, ranked 43.
Here’s the top 10:
The top 10 rankings of Electric Era’s EV Charging Index.
Context:
The index comes from Electric Era, a Seattle EV fast-charging company that makes battery-backed chargers, so it is the industry's own read on the market rather than a neutral referee. The company says the list isn't meant as a judgment, just a snapshot of where retailers stand, and it plans to refresh it every quarter with a look at the biggest movers.
Electric Era says it plans to update the Retail EV Charging Index every quarter, allowing retailers to benchmark their progress and track how charging strategies evolve as competition for EV drivers intensifies.
Source: Electric Era Retail EV Charging Index
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