The issue today for many multifamily operators isn’t whether to install EV chargers, but how to choose among a crowded field of vendors.
Despite varied branding and sales narratives, many providers offer remarkably similar features, pricing models, and overlapping value propositions.
A wave of new startups, aggressive outbound sales tactics, and shifting business models has left operators navigating what some describe as a “wild west,” while others argue the sector is entering a phase of consolidation and operational maturity.
In this report, we spoke with multifamily operators and EV charging experts to sort through the crowded vendor market and help you separate the best providers from the ones you should avoid. We also compare and contrast the top EV charging vendors, including ChargePoint, Blink, SWITCH, Legrand, and EverCharge.
Aligning deployment with real demand
EV charging may no longer dominate headlines, but the market continues to advance, even as the enthusiasm for sustainability has lost political momentum.
“EV charging has gone from being out in front — this exciting, must-have innovation — to just a basic amenity,” said Nathan Kimpel, Head of Technology, Multifamily, at Cushman & Wakefield. “At this point, it’s like putting in a pool house or a bathroom in the pool house. You’re just doing it.”
A recent National Multifamily Housing Council survey found that EV ownership among apartment renters remains relatively low at about 4% nationally. However, one-third of EV-owning renters report having no access to on-site charging.
For operators, the infrastructure gap presents both risk and opportunity. Demand is steadily rising, and multifamily communities can secure a meaningful competitive advantage by offering EV charging. But execution matters. Building too many charging stations before residents actually need them strains budgets and puts unnecessary pressure on a property’s electrical system. A better approach is to add chargers gradually, based on real demand at the property and in the local market.
Importantly, EV ownership is not uniform across rental markets. While national renter adoption remains relatively low, certain markets, particularly on the West Coast, report ownership rates as much as three times the national average.
For example, San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Francisco all have EV ownership rates well above the national average. That disparity underscores the need for a market-specific strategy rather than a one-size-fits-all rollout.
The ‘wild west’ or the ‘Great Maturation’?
As electric vehicle sales nationwide have increased, the EV charging vendor ecosystem has shifted dramatically over the past two years.
In April 2024, Tesla laid off much of the roughly 500-person team responsible for expanding its Supercharger network, raising questions about the pace of future deployments and creating uncertainty across the charging industry. The broader EV charging sector has also experienced financial pressure, consolidation, and restructuring as early-stage charging startups struggle to reach profitability.
Because of that disruption—and because EV charging still looks like a long-term growth market—new companies rushed in to fill the gap, including hardware manufacturers, charging network operators, and software platforms.
“EV charging, similar to AI, is like the wild west right now,” said Jay Richard-Yu, Vice President of Tech & Innovation at Jamestown. “We’re still learning, and this industry continues to evolve.”
But according to some observers, the vendor market may be stabilizing. Jeremy Cohen, Director of Real Estate Partnerships at SWITCH, refers to the current phase of EV charging as “the Great Maturation.” SWITCH provides EV charging solutions for multifamily and commercial properties across North America.
“Two years ago, the market was fragmented with dozens of startups,” Cohen told us. “Today, the landscape is consolidating around vendors who understand the specific operational rigors of real estate.”
Cohen says the vendor landscape has moved past the “gold rush” phase, where owners “just wanted a charger in the ground.”
“Now, it’s about uptime, billing reliability, a seamless experience for drivers, and integrations with the systems real estate owners require to achieve operational efficiency,” Cohen said.
It’s the soft skills that matter the most
While the number of providers has grown, meaningful differentiation has not necessarily followed. Many vendors present themselves as distinct, but in practice, their offerings often look remarkably similar.
“A lot of vendors have their different flavors of it, but they’re always the same,” Kimpel told us. “If I tell you we’re using ChargePoint, and you ask how that’s different than Blink, I’m struggling to answer.”
Kimpel said that feature sets are largely on parity, installation timelines are similar, and pricing structures often mirror one another. Even revenue-sharing or administrative-fee models tend to follow similar structures. In a market where products and pricing look alike, Kimple relies on a simple three-part framework when evaluating vendors: feature set, value (ROI + cost), and soft skills. On the first two fronts, differentiation is limited. That leaves the third bucket, which in today’s environment is often the decisive one.
“It’s the soft skills of a company that actually differentiate it in a market where all the features are the same and the money is the same,” he said.
In other words, EV charging vendor selection has become less about technology and more about service execution, customer service, and relationship management.
“Are they going to honor something that breaks? Do they have the support structure? Are they nice people? All of that matters the most,” Kimpel said.
When a charging partner shuts down
Cohen’s characterization of the “Great Maturation” of the vendor market may be accurate. But it doesn’t mean the vendor landscape is entirely stable.
The shutdown of Shell Volta is an example of this. In March 2024, Shell announced it would retire the Volta brand and lay off 15% of its global EV charging workforce. Many Volta stations were decommissioned or transitioned, depending on agreements with property owners and site hosts.
Jamestown was one of the Shell Volta customers that was affected, according to Richard-Yu. “Like many landlords and their operators, we had to come together and negotiate a settlement agreement,” Richard-Yu said.
Jamestown removed the equipment and restored its parking areas to their original condition. That left Jamestown, as the landlord-operator, essentially having to hit the reset button and identify the right partner to deliver the appropriate EV experience for the properties impacted by that relationship.
For Richard-Yu, experiences like this with vendors have heightened the importance of due diligence when finding new EV charging providers.
“When we’re having conversations with new and emerging brands in this industry, we ask tough questions about how viable the business really is and where they stand compared to a portfolio like Jamestown,” Richard-Yu said.
During due diligence, Jamestown goes in-depth on infrastructure and especially software. They want to know: Is the software proprietary? If the company is acquired or goes out of business, what happens, particularly from a software perspective? Is the software and hardware truly agnostic?
“It’s really about working through a checklist of key questions around business viability and long-term success, making sure we feel comfortable and confident pursuing a relationship with that vendor,” Richard-Yu said.
Red flags of weak vendors
With vendor failure a serious risk in the EV charging market, it’s important to distinguish between serious long-term vendors and opportunistic entrants. Cohen told us much of this comes down to Open Charge Point Protocol compliance and support. “Serious vendors build on open standards so the owner isn’t left with ‘bricks’ if the vendor goes out of business,” Cohen said.
Cohen continued that opportunistic vendors often sell proprietary, closed-loop systems that lock owners into their software forever. Furthermore, a serious vendor has a dedicated multifamily support stack. “They understand that a charger failing at 10 p.m. on a Sunday in a residential garage is a crisis for the resident, not just a ‘ticket’ to be handled on Monday,” he said.
Weaker vendors also treat their projects as transactions rather than partnerships, according to Cohen.
“They ship the hardware, provide a login, and disappear,” he said. “You can spot them by their lack of a 24/7 driver support line, no localized technician network for repairs, and software that hasn’t been updated to handle things like utility ‘Time of Use’ rates or demand response programs.”
The profit center illusion
Cohen also sees many vendors who overpromise on “set it and forget it” revenue.
“Some vendors pitch EV charging as a pure profit center from day one,” he said. “But in multifamily, charging is first and foremost a resident-attraction and retention amenity.”
Cohen explained that, while you can certainly recover costs and eventually see a return, vendors who promise “free infrastructure” in exchange for 10 years of your revenue are often hiding high user fees that will frustrate your residents and lead to low utilization.
Kimpel agrees. He said that revenue-sharing models exist, but returns are modest. Owners may choose to recoup costs or treat it purely as an amenity. Either way, he says it should not be underwritten as a major driver of income.
“It comes down to how the owner wants to handle it,” Kimpel said. “But at the end of the day, it’s not a needle-mover for revenue.”
Future-proofing the agreement
When negotiating contracts, Cohen said that the key question is whether the contract gives you long-term flexibility and the ability to adapt as the EV charging landscape matures.
“Look closely at Network Service Fees,” he said. “Are you paying a flat monthly fee, or is the vendor taking a large percentage of your charging revenue? Revenue share can seem simple up front, but it becomes expensive as utilization grows.”
Multifamily operators should also check for exclusivity. Does the contract lock you into one hardware or software provider, limiting your ability to add new chargers or switch vendors later? Termination rights are also critical. If the software is unreliable or uptime is poor, can you change network providers without ripping out the chargers? If the hardware is not OCPP-compliant, you may not be able to.
Finally, review data ownership and portability. You should own your charging data and be able to export it easily if you decide to move on.
Don’t go on a power trip
According to Cohen, one of the biggest myths about EV charging is that every project requires a massive electrical upgrade to start. Cohen said owners often look at their available capacity and assume they can only support two or three chargers before they have to call the utility for a $50k transformer upgrade. In reality, with intelligent software that dynamically shares power, you can often support dozens of chargers on existing infrastructure.
“The constraint isn’t the wire,” he said. “It’s the lack of intelligent energy management.”
A common mistake owners make in EV planning is assuming that higher power chargers are better or even necessary. Deployment strategy should align with resident behavior, infrastructure constraints, and long-term cost efficiency.
Operators evaluating vendors are advised to compare multiple charging models, including traditional Level 2 providers and lower-power alternatives, before committing to a portfolio-wide rollout. Lower-power solutions, including Level 1 or managed low-amperage systems, can often provide a more cost-effective and scalable path in multifamily settings, where vehicles are parked overnight. For the average commuter driving roughly 30 miles per day, overnight Level 1 charging is typically sufficient to replenish daily usage.
“It’s much more affordable for multifamily owners and operators, and it can still deliver a great user experience,” said Anna Guida, Program Manager at Forth, a nonprofit that provides technical assistance to help property owners deploy EV charging.
Kimpel says Level 2 chargers remain the standard of operation for multifamily properties. Residents typically charge overnight, making slower, sustained charging sufficient for daily use. Level 3 (DC fast) chargers are rarely necessary in residential settings and are better suited for office or retail environments, where drivers need a quicker turnaround and charging speed is a higher priority.
Start small, scale strategically
When determining how many charging stations to install, Kimpel says operators often rely on vendors to help model initial demand.
“They’ll come out and recommend something like two spots per hundred units, something in that ballpark,” Kimpel said.
The goal is to avoid overbuilding too early. While EV adoption is growing, utilization remains highly variable across markets and asset classes. Installing too many chargers upfront can tie up capital and infrastructure capacity without delivering proportional value. In both greenfield developments and brownfield retrofits, Kimpel’s team typically favors a conservative approach. “We’ll usually under-build,” he said. “It’s easier to add spaces later than it is to remove them.”
That’s particularly true because EV charging infrastructure isn’t easily reversible. Conduit, wiring, trenching, and electrical upgrades are embedded beneath pavement and parking areas. If a property overbuilds and later decides to scale back, the cost and disruption of removing infrastructure can be significant.
Kimpel’s advice: build for today’s demand, preserve flexibility, and expand as adoption increases.
Charging ahead
The EV charging vendor landscape remains crowded, with limited differentiation in hardware and pricing. That reality elevates the importance of service quality, open standards, contract flexibility, and long-term viability. In a maturing but still volatile market, due diligence takes on increased importance.
Owners must resist two common traps: underwriting charging as a meaningful profit center and overbuilding infrastructure in anticipation of demand that has yet to materialize. Intelligent load management, right-sized power strategies, and phased deployment offer a more disciplined path forward.
– Nick Pipitone
