How to include electric car charging in your parking management strategy

The problem with making reactive decisions is that the needs and conditions of the property — today and tomorrow — are not factored in. A demand is met here and now, but how does this affect the wider business? How are things such as the needs of future tenants, the electricity capacity of the property and your ability to price the charge in a marketable and customer-friendly way taken into account?

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Electric car charging and parking are connected

In order to secure your business for the future, you need to think proactively and set a coherent strategy for parking and electric car charging. The idea is actually quite simple — in order for the charging experience to be as smooth as possible, it should be offered in conjunction with parking. Most people who want to charge their electric car with you probably already use your parking spaces, and no parking attendant who regularly parks next to the property wants to have to get down and move the car when it has finished charging.

By adding electric car charging to your parking offer, you can also attract new customers who have not previously seen the opportunity to park with you, which leads to increased revenues.

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Important questions and common pitfalls

Before setting up your strategy for parking and EV charging, there are a couple of questions you should keep in mind, to avoid common pitfalls that can put sticks in the wheel:

• Needs and conditions in the property. What electricity capacity do you have, what energy needs are there from other parts of the property and how can you meet the need for electric car charging today and tomorrow? How does the platform you choose work with the energy of the entire property?
• Technical operation and the life of the investment. What different chargers are on the market and what is their expected lifespan? What are the different solutions for installing, operating and monitoring the chargers? How is load balancing managed?
• Pricing and packaging. How will you sell electric car charging to your tenants so that it is a user-friendly experience and relevant pricing now and in the future? What margin requirements do you have and how do you avoid, for example, putting too low a price on too high power (a common mistake that will be difficult to adjust later)?

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Three steps to a unified approach to parking and electric car charging

Ok, now you have come to the conclusion that you want to offer electric car charging in connection with the parking lot, and you have started to think about what technical and commercial conditions you have to do this — good! But how do you go about setting your strategy, in concrete terms? Here are some tips:

1 - Inventory the needs of your parking customers

If you have not already taken stock of your parking assets, it is high time to do so now — the whole strategy should be based on how your tenants and parking customers want to use parking at the property. To create a relevant and attractive charging offer, you need to start from their needs, for example:

• Do you rent business parking where there is mainly a need for recharging during office hours? Are there companies with electric utility vehicles in the property?
• Do you live in or near the property who mainly needs to recharge in the evenings, nights and weekends?
• Is there an individual need for charging at fixed locations during certain times of the day?

• Do you have visitors or employees who need to be able to charge their electric car more sporadically?

2 - Create a flexible packaging

Package the electric car charger according to customer needs and price it so that there is a natural and demand-driven distribution between the different charging options. As with parking, where a smaller space needs to have a lower price than a large one to avoid everyone queuing for the big seats while the small ones stand empty, the same strategy is needed for electric car charging.

For example, a setup might look like this:

• Unreserved Charging Location: Access to charging zone with subscription rental, where the parking attendant has the right to stand at all times and can charge according to availability. For example, can be divided between “dayplace” and “evening/night/weekend place”.
• VIP seat: Fixed charging points with guaranteed access to electricity. Premium seats that are packaged and priced based on the fact that they are part of a limited resource.
• P-state with charging: Temporary charging points that can be used subject to availability (e.g. visitor points)

3 - Set a marketable and reasonable price

The price tag for the use of the charging points consists of two parts:

1. Subscription cost. The customer pays a subscription fee for the right to use the charging point. The price for this will cover the cost of installing the equipment, as well as the ongoing operation and maintenance of the charging park. On top of that, you set a reasonable margin based on your needs and conditions.
2. Variable current charging. In addition to the subscription fee, the price for consumption of the charge itself is then added. This varies and may depend, for example, on the power that the charge is delivered with, where fast charging costs more than normal charging.

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Take control of your charging business

Only when you have set up your strategy, are clear about the prerequisites you have for offering electric car charging, and have thought through how you want to package and price the offer, is it time to choose how you want to purchase and manage your parking and charging offer.

When buying chargers directly from a charging box manufacturer, you run the risk of locking into a certain type of hardware, pricing, or distribution of charging, but by making use of a digital ERP system for parking management and electric vehicle charging You can keep control of your business. With digital management, and with the help of the data collected by the system, it becomes easier to grow over time and adapt the offer to the needs of customers and your opportunities. This creates greater flexibility for both you and your customers.

Digital management creates new opportunities

You should use a system that is completely hardware agnostic. This means that the system is not connected to any specific type of charger, but you can choose the charger or chargers that suit you best. In this way, you can vary, test yourself and put different suppliers in competition. You retain control over your charging management and control distribution, usage rights and pricing yourself, while the vendor handles hardware, connectivity and load balancing on your mission — all bundled into your platform.

If you do not want or have the opportunity to take care of the operation of your chargers on your own, there are charging operators that are connected to our system. By turning to them, you can get help on a day-to-day basis, without missing out on the benefits of digital management.

The time is ripe for proactive decisions

It is high time to offer electric car charging and to take a unified approach to your strategic access parking. Because it is precisely by seeing electric car charging as an integral part of your parking management that you can create an attractive, profitable and long-term sustainable charging offer.

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