The EV shift is here
Our recent feature in The Urban Developer drew strong engagement from property owners, developers, and investors keen to understand how EV charging is reshaping the way commercial properties respond to the expectations of buyers, tenants, and customers.
In just the first six months of 2025, Australians purchased more than 72,000 electric vehicles, a 24 per cent year-on-year increase. EVs now account for 12.1 per cent of all new car sales, with June marking the strongest month on record at almost 16 per cent of new sales. The national fleet has now surpassed 370,000 vehicles, and is on track to reach one million by 2027.
The shift isn’t a future headline—EVs are already parked in your assets: more at the boom gate, tenants asking where to plug in, visitors expecting charging as standard.
And the commercial stakes are real.
The right infrastructure creates a new lease income stream for property owners, while EV drivers typically dwell for around 34 minutes and spend an average of $29 on nearby retail purchases. That behaviour injects up to $100,000 of incremental spend into surrounding retailers each year.
Installing the wrong type of charger locks up bays, frustrates tenants and leaves money on the table.
What matters now is not if you respond, but how: where charging sits, how fast it turns over and who pays for it.
The AC bottleneck
For many property owners, the instinctive move is to install a slow AC (7 kW) charger.
On paper it looks like a sustainability gesture until reality hits.
A bay is tied up for hours, serving just 1–3 cars a day.
Throughput is capped, bays clog, and the owner wears the capex, opex, power bill and the admin.
Instead of an amenity, it risks becoming a bottleneck.
The JOLT advantage: Level 3, DC free, fast and clean charging
JOLT changes the economics. We’re the only charging provider giving every driver a free daily top-up (~7 kWh, about 50 km of range).
Delivered in around 15 minutes on a 25kW DC charger, it’s seven times faster than slow AC.
But speed isn’t the only hook.
That free daily charge is habit-forming: drivers return again and again to claim it. They grab the ~15-minute top-up and often charge a little longer; average dwell is ~34 minutes, anchoring incremental spend around your property.
Quick sessions keep bays circulating. The free top-up keeps customers coming back.
▲ Seamless user experience is central to JOLT’s fast, free and app-enabled EV charging.
Every session is powered by 100 per cent accredited renewable energy, supporting your ESG goals and enabling genuine zero-emission mobility for tenants and visitors.
Installed and operated at zero cost to the host, the charger behaves like a tenant: lease income from JOLT, repeat visitation, daily allocation of advertising on the screen, and up to $100,000 in additional local retail spend each year.
Drivers actively seek out JOLT sites: 70 per cent of customers say they’ve chosen a business because it’s near a JOLT charger, and once there, 80 per cent make a purchase.
“If that charger wasn’t here, I wouldn’t be spending a cent with these businesses. The charger takes me to places I wouldn’t otherwise visit.”
—JOLT customer, Sydney
Landowners and investors: a new income line
This isn’t a sustainability tick. It’s a revenue stream from an asset you already own. Zero capital. Zero energy bills.
Premium infrastructure installed and operated at no cost, with lease payments locked in and a customer flywheel funded by advertising.
Advertisers cover the daily top-up on the charger screens. JOLT pays you to host. Customers spend with your tenants. Incentives aligned.
Hosts also receive 5 per cent of digital screen time to promote the property or priority tenants, a flexible lever for campaigns, events and launches.
“From the very beginning of the process, the JOLT team demonstrated professionalism, expertise, and a seamless approach to implementation.”
—Alexandre Lazourenko, private landowner
▲ JOLT charging stations are built into streetscapes, drawing foot traffic and retail spend at no cost to landlords.
Property managers: zero lift
The JOLT app shows live availability, predicts wait times, sends session-complete alerts and applies idle fees to keep bays moving.
It’s backed by a 24/7 hotline. Translation: no chasing overstays, no bill shock, no complaints. Onsite, the charger reads as an amenity, not a friction point.
“The installation process was completely hassle-free for me as the landlord, and JOLT managed everything end-to-end at zero cost to my business—a truly remarkable offering in this space.”
—Alexandre Lazourenko, private landowner
Install fast. Run reliably. Small footprint.
JOLT manages grid assessments, permits and compliance end-to-end, co-ordinating with your team to minimise disruption.
Only one to two bays are needed for a standard deployment.
Once live, the network runs at ~98 per cent charger uptime, and customers dwell for around 34 minutes on average.
Fast sessions mean fewer complaints, more circulation, and more trade for your tenants.
Profitable public charging, already here
“Smart cities of the future are now planning their EV charging networks around retail and urban precincts with high foot traffic, where consumers are ready to spend.”
—Stuart Moffatt, general manager—network growth, JOLT
That vision is already here. JOLT’s model doesn’t just install premium infrastructure at zero cost—it creates customer habits.
The free daily charge is a behavioural anchor: drivers build it into their routines and keep returning to the same site, circulating spend through your tenants and surrounding retailers.
If you’re ready to see how charging can create new income, attract loyal customers and align your site with the next wave of urban growth, the best next step is a conversation:
Unlock the opportunity at your site
A version of this article first appeared in The Urban Developer as a sponsored feature by JOLT.
Read Plugging into the Future: How EV Chargers Are Building Communities, Driving Economic Growth and Reimagining Public Infrastructure — JOLT’s definitive white paper that goes beyond the headlines to unpack the data, behaviour, and commercial models driving Australia’s EV transition. It’s essential reading for any property professional preparing for what’s next.
Contact our team → Explore how DC fast charging can deliver lease income, attract repeat customers, and provide zero-cost infrastructure for your site.
Data attribution
EV adoption statistics sourced from the Electric Vehicle Council’s State of EVs 2025 report. Customer behaviour and retail uplift figures are drawn from JOLT’s white paper, Plugging into the Future: How EV Chargers Are Building Communities, Driving Economic Growth and Reimagining Public Infrastructure. Operational data reflects JOLT’s internal network performance metrics as of 2025.
