Many public charging stations for electric vehicles in the United States are chargers installed at the premises of pre-existing businesses such as grocery stores or restaurants. This paper investigates the incentives of these retail businesses to install and operate charging stations. First, we note that observed pricing schedules for charging stations significantly depart from both first-best and monopoly pricing. We argue that a possible explanation is that many hosting facilities may install a charging station primarily as a strategy to attract more customers to their core business. Second, we use an imperfect competition model to study retail businesses’ incentives to invest in charging stations. We show that hosting facilities may be trapped in a prisoner’s dilemma where investing in a charging station decreases their profit in the long run. However, the equilibrium level of investments in public charging stations need not differ from the socially optimal outcome.

美国的许多电动汽车公共充电站都是安装在杂货店或餐馆等现有企业场所的充电器。本文调查了这些零售企业安装和运营充电站的动机。首先，我们注意到观察到的充电站定价时间表明显偏离了最优定价和垄断定价。我们认为，一个可能的解释是，许多托管设施可能会安装充电站，主要是作为吸引更多客户参与其核心业务的策略。其次，我们使用不完全竞争模型来研究零售企业投资充电站的动机。我们表明，托管设施可能陷入囚徒困境，投资充电站从长远来看会降低其利润。